Gossip Girl (and Boy) Names
In a desperate attempt to bond with the teenagers in my family, I have become a devoted watcher of Gossip Girl. And as I take in the adventures of these upper-crusty New York teens, I can’t help but ruminate on their names.
What’s remarkable is not so much the names of the characters – BLAIR, the name of the series’ Queen Bee, is the only one that truly fits the mold – but the names of the actors who play them.
No fewer than five of the actors with major roles have names that are eighties-style upwardly-mobile surname-names, perfectly in tune with the style of the show:
(For the uninitiated, Blake, Leighton, and Taylor are girls, Chace and Penn are boys.)
Two other actors have names in the same vein, but not quite as stereotypical:
Other names that fit this mold, now more commonly heard on twenty-something interns and junior editors and gallery assistants than on babies, include:
CARTER
COURTNEY
DEVIN and DEVON
JORDAN
LINDSAY and LINDSEY
MORGAN
TYLER
WHITNEY
The idea of these names was to impart a veneer of upper class style by appropriating a tony-sounding surname as a first. While the 1980s was one heyday of this trend, it wasn’t the first. Immigrant parents in the 1920s U.S. used British surnames for their sons in order to make them sound classy. Unfortunately, by now, these names sound anything but:
BURTON
IRVING
IRWIN
MARSHALL
MELVIN
MERVYN
MILTON
MONROE
MORRIS
SEYMOUR
SHELDON
SHERMAN
SHERWIN
SIDNEY
STANLEY
The use of the classy-sounding surname-as-first, for girls and for boys, is only getting more pervasive today. Some newer examples
ADDISON
AINSLEY
AVERY
EMERSON
EMERY
EVERETT
FINLAY and FINLEY
HARPER
HAYDEN
KENNEDY
LANE
LOGAN
MASON
PAISLEY
PARKER
PAYTON/PEYTON
PRESTON
QUINN
REAGAN and REGAN
REESE
ROWAN
SAWYER
SKYLAR and SKYLER (and even the original SCHUYLER)TEAGAN