future baby names (far future)

I'm writing a story set in the 2070's, and I need names, what do you think the name trends will be by then?
This is basically your typical doom and gloom, government controls everything, end of life as we know it type story.
I guess the older people will have names like Madison, Ashley and Aidan. Most of the characters will be teenagers, though, so what do you think I should name them?
Should I give them weird, futuristic sounding names?
Should I assume the government controls what you can name your children? and if so what should the names be?
Or should I follow the idea that every 100 years names become popular again, and give them names from the 50's and 60's like Lisa and Donna?
Any suggestion would be completely appreciated as I'm at a total loss.

This sounds like an interesting story. I would use a combo of the 100 year rule names and anything you think might be trendy in 45-50 years for the teenagers if I were writing the story. Using the names that are popular now for the elderly characters is perfect.

I agree about using the 100 year rule, so if you said the kids were born in the 2050's/2060's, try baby-boomer like names. Brenda, Lisa, Greg, etc. However, yooneek names are probably going to be even more popular, so you may just have to make some up! I wouldn't go with weird futuristic names. Compare the 1930's to now, Emma may have sounded a bit old, not at all futuristic. If you do choose to have the government regulate names, pick classics. If all else fails, say that sometime in the nearby future (from now) the government came out with a list of approved names with names that are popular now.

Thanks for your ideas! I guess I will go with the hundred years rule.
Do you think I should actually use names that were popular in the sixties, or just look at the style and try to think of names along those lines, because I notice there aren't to many baby Mildreds, Helens, or Virginias, but there are Millies, Eleanors, and Valeries. Do you think I should try to figure out what trends were popular in the 60's and think of other names that go with those that aren't actually the same.
Or am I making this too complicated?
So far I like Liza, Jezebel (when the government proved there was no God, names like this became okay;) Jani, Sunny, Charles and Gregory for the teenagers. For their parents who would probably be middle aged or older and probably born within the next 20 years, I think I'll use names that look like they'll be climbing up the popularity charts soon,
like Viola, Arabella, Lila, Zane, Phineas, and Levi. Then there will be a few older people who are part of the resistance movement, for them I think the main woman will be Sopia, Idk about her husband yet, and another woman I think will be Grace. Any other thoughts or suggestions?
I know this could be easier, but I'm too much of a name nerd to let an oppurtunity like this slip by without putting some thought into the names, lol.

the 100 yr idea makes sense but its not much fun at all. Maybe you could look up in the social security records the top 1,000 names in the 1800's I have looked them up and there are some funny ones like Jewell and hope for a boy. If the government proves religion to be false maybe biblical names should be outlawed?? Im just throwing out ideas. Maybe in the future parents, instead of biblical names being pop, shakespearian names or greek mythology names like Thisbe and such are pop? Just a few ideas. Good luck!!

ooo! This is fun!
Can I just suggest some fun names? Using the 100 yr rule sounds great, but when I looked up the names in the Top 100...they're all "normal"... So I looked up the Top 1000 and stuck to the later half...

Here's some of my suggestions...just for fun :)
These are in the Top 1000 in 1955. Therefore, using the 100yr rule...in 2070 they would be 15. Does this make sense? I like that these names are different, but still pronoucible. I don't like it when I'm reading something and I have to make-up how to say a name because its so different. It distracts me from the story.
Girls:
Louella
Florine
Moira
Lorinda
Zelma*
Martina
Odessa*
Starla
Taryn
Lanette
Concetta
Marlys*
Lindy
Twyla*
Millicent
Deidre
Danita
Cornelia
Athena*

Boys:
Rowland*
Stefan
Vernell
Dante
Harmon*
Porter
Eldridge
Leander
Waymon
Susan (seriously)
Arnulfo
Cleve
Barrett
Chauncey*
Dell
Sherwood
Lynwood
Kevan
Boyce*
Houston
Hershel
Major
Efrain

Here's some from the Top1000 in 1880 (the earliest data on the SSA site) -- It'll be sorta like a 200 yr rule :) And these ones are really fun!

Girls:
Eulalie
Elzada
Edwina*
Delfina
Dayse
Cleora
Chaney
Berdie
Arminda
Vertie*
Thelma
Verona
Tempie*
Roena
Parthenia*
Genie
Concepcion (not kidding)
Zilpha
Tressie*
Mena

Boys:
Layton*
Jabez
Hyrum
Gottlieb
Firman
Erasmus
Dow
Chalmers*
Chesley
Chin
Boston*
Arvid
Ashby
Rafe*
Mervin
Levy
Jarrett*
Friend (for real)
Elam
Commodore
Arlington
Toney
Theron
Creed*
Chancy
Burley
Bedford
Price*
Stonewall

If it has a * it means I really like it for your story ;)

Those are awesome, I think I might actually use Creed, Price, and Twyla.

I think by 2070, the 100-year rule may have shifted due to life spans. A lot of names being used today have not had to wait 100 years (so the cycle goes faster for some people), while some names popular 100 years ago have not caught on (because they sound too .. something). I think the 100-year rule works now because most of the people who had those names have died. When people of an era are mostly all still alive, a name seems "like an old person," and hard to name a baby, but after they die, one imagines them in memory or projection of what they must have been like in their youth and infancy, revitalizing the image of the name and its usability. If people live longer, their names will still seem too "old" for most people's tastes. I'm not sure how scientific this rule is either, or how it has shifted from when life-spans were shorter.

To look into 2070, only 60 years from now, look at 60 years in the past, 1950. How much has stayed the same and how much has changed? I imagine at least one more name, such as Adolph, will be rendered "unusable" by the year 2070, especially if there is a massive change in the government. This is only what I imagine.

Perhaps everyone will be named Lucy, after "I Love Lucy" and be issued a number. Will gender still be an issue? Can some female names be used for males or will all the female names disappear and we will all have male names - and nobody calls it a problem. In my imagination of the future, people stop caring whether a name is too girly for their son because we have discarded the concept. Anyone who still clings to "purity" of names will be an old-timer and say things like "back in my day," and "git off'a mah lawn!" if people even still have lawns - the environmental issues of today will either manifest themselves in the lack of lawns (seen as decadent or impossible to grow anyway), or a solution has been discovered and implemented, even if it's very realistic fake grass. I digress... However, if nature is really in trouble, nature names might be nostalgic and somewhat ironic.

Perhaps they can no longer name their children at all, and the government not only regulates their names, they issue names from the HQ - like one family has to have Aidan, Braden, Caden, Drayden, Eden, and can't have more than 5, because there is no F and are forcibly sterilized. The family next door has a different set of instructions and order to the names they can choose. A few renegade parents may decide to rebel, and their rebellious choices are names like Kim and Joe. One-syllable names might be the wave of what's modern, or names that combine numbers and other symbols. Probably some made-up names of today will be the classics of tomorrow. Once a name is very old, people seem to regard it with more authority, not having had to live beside people creating names out of the air or misspelling them at whim, or just taking letters and scrambling them and see what happens. More word names and maybe more surnames that aren't used today, a lot more ethnic diversity in choosing surnames for first names - and people might be less concerned with whether that is a likely match, similar to a name like Finley "because it sounds nice" as opposed to having that name in one's history, or even being Irish. If one is not Irish, they can still use the name, so this idea will expand, and people will just take names they like without having ties, from sources that don't seem as viable right now.

I think in the scheme of things, we were supposed to wear silver jumpsuits and flying cars by the year 2000, so I kind of think the futuristic idea of enumerating people is still centuries away, not decades.

Will robots have names and genders? This is a very interesting idea. Good luck with your story!

I think the whole mythology/shakespere idea would work very well here.

karen wrote:I think by 2070, the 100-year rule may have shifted due to life spans. A lot of names being used today have not had to wait 100 years (so the cycle goes faster for some people), while some names popular 100 years ago have not caught on (because they sound too .. something). I think the 100-year rule works now because most of the people who had those names have died. When people of an era are mostly all still alive, a name seems "like an old person," and hard to name a baby, but after they die, one imagines them in memory or projection of what they must have been like in their youth and infancy, revitalizing the image of the name and its usability. If people live longer, their names will still seem too "old" for most people's tastes. I'm not sure how scientific this rule is either, or how it has shifted from when life-spans were shorter.

To look into 2070, only 60 years from now, look at 60 years in the past, 1950. How much has stayed the same and how much has changed? I imagine at least one more name, such as Adolph, will be rendered "unusable" by the year 2070, especially if there is a massive change in the government. This is only what I imagine.

Perhaps everyone will be named Lucy, after "I Love Lucy" and be issued a number. Will gender still be an issue? Can some female names be used for males or will all the female names disappear and we will all have male names - and nobody calls it a problem. In my imagination of the future, people stop caring whether a name is too girly for their son because we have discarded the concept. Anyone who still clings to "purity" of names will be an old-timer and say things like "back in my day," and "git off'a mah lawn!" if people even still have lawns - the environmental issues of today will either manifest themselves in the lack of lawns (seen as decadent or impossible to grow anyway), or a solution has been discovered and implemented, even if it's very realistic fake grass. I digress... However, if nature is really in trouble, nature names might be nostalgic and somewhat ironic.

Perhaps they can no longer name their children at all, and the government not only regulates their names, they issue names from the HQ - like one family has to have Aidan, Braden, Caden, Drayden, Eden, and can't have more than 5, because there is no F and are forcibly sterilized. The family next door has a different set of instructions and order to the names they can choose. A few renegade parents may decide to rebel, and their rebellious choices are names like Kim and Joe. One-syllable names might be the wave of what's modern, or names that combine numbers and other symbols. Probably some made-up names of today will be the classics of tomorrow. Once a name is very old, people seem to regard it with more authority, not having had to live beside people creating names out of the air or misspelling them at whim, or just taking letters and scrambling them and see what happens. More word names and maybe more surnames that aren't used today, a lot more ethnic diversity in choosing surnames for first names - and people might be less concerned with whether that is a likely match, similar to a name like Finley "because it sounds nice" as opposed to having that name in one's history, or even being Irish. If one is not Irish, they can still use the name, so this idea will expand, and people will just take names they like without having ties, from sources that don't seem as viable right now.

I think in the scheme of things, we were supposed to wear silver jumpsuits and flying cars by the year 2000, so I kind of think the futuristic idea of enumerating people is still centuries away, not decades.

Will robots have names and genders? This is a very interesting idea. Good luck with your story!

Thanks for such a thoughtful reply! In the story I'm writing, technology hasn't really advanced that much, in fact a lot of medical research has been put on the back burner in order to organise more programs and better control the population at large, the same goes for the environment, so people probably aren't really living longer then they do now. If we're allowed to post links, I could put one up that goes to the prologue. You have a good point about there being a lot more ethnic diversity in surname names, and just names in general. Maybe I should try to find more foreign names that aren't used that much now in the west, hmm...