Are modern names more 'interesting'?

[ac9nec5]

Yes, I know-“Why does this person post nothing but boring rants?”-but hear me out.

So I’m working on a reality show fanfiction with my own characters (it’s a bit more of an experiment than a serious project ). It’s just your average ‘win and get rich’ show for random broke people. I spent a crap ton of time coming up with names that fit their vibe but were also realistic for people born in the 90s/00s (I wanted to gear it more towards young people). I ended up with names like Elijah and Tyler, Lauren and Rachel. All on the same cast. …not very interesting, but I’ll take it. (Forgive me, my last major project was a fanfiction so I only named my protagonist and the three barely-relevant people she lives with when she’s not at boarding school.)

Recently, I got the idea to give the cast of the Netflix reality show The Devil’s Plan English names. (just Asian things ) (I know that two of their irl English names are Michael and Danielle, which would’ve flown-heck, that’s the name of my last protagonist-if she didn’t have rich famous parents who seemed more likely to name their kid… X Ash Archangel Twelve?) (I picked Delphi for her.) (My former project was a Harry Potter fanfic, if that helps.) (I also wanted to try the people who did the English dub but I could only find a few)

Maybe it’s because I haven’t fleshed out my OCs enough (to be fair, they ARE my lab rats , but I’ve spent sooooo painfully long on their backstories and personalities and stuff), or maybe it’s because my OCs have 13 times the name options because I made the Devil’s Plan people’s initials match their Korean names (ex. Danielle’s Korean name is Dong-Joo, so I could only pick names starting with D or J)

But what I quickly realized is that most of the Devil’s Plan contestants are celebs with long (hence why they’re older), illustrious careers that have long outgrown the name of the next homeless person on the street. Brian is just the guy at work; Bodhi is the goofy travel YouTuber who sleeps in every day and thinks he’s better than everyone else. Rachel is the girl with the completely-unsuccessful business selling art online who is tired of living in obsoleteness (no, this is really my character); Remi (ETA: Katie irl) is the TV host who gets a target on her back for trying too hard to be the team mum (no, it’s not a spoiler, it happens in the first episode).

Yes, rare names are a thing, but I imagine you’d be less surprised to see an Ash or Rex in their 20s than someone with a ‘kid’s name’, like a Remi in their 40s, or Bodhi, Willow or Harper in their 30s. Heck, you probably won’t even see a Kai in their 20s either.

I truly think we’re seeing more diverse names becoming trendy nowadays. Even when I look at the data from the 00s, I’m surprised to see that classic names like Jacob, Matthew and Daniel top the charts-but you don’t see that nowadays. Why that is… I have no idea. (If you do, I’m very curious to know )

Thoughts? (Although you’re probably tired of these posts by now )

PS unless Yvonne was still around by the late 80s, then I guess I have overly old names on my roster as well

PPS the only non-celeb on the cast-a doctor-was renamed Megan. I was very, VERY tempted to go for Meredith.

[Youssarian]

Okay, first of all - I also do reality show fanfictions. It’s kind of what helped me launch my obsession with names, because I was naming all of these fictional reality show participants. Although “fanfiction” maybe wouldn’t be the right word because I don’t write them… maybe “reality show daydreams” would be better lol because I just kind of create my own world that all of these shows and people exist in and just kind of imagine the shows and how they play out and their interdynamics throughout my own day. Anyway, nerd moment aside, all that to say I’ve been doing this for over a decade and have tons and tons of imagined shows and contestants.

I definitely feel what you’re saying about more common names being more boring. When I first started, I would use names like [name_m]Brian[/name_m], [name_f]Rachel[/name_f], [name_m]Jacob[/name_m], etc. but then I’d start getting confused and forgetting who was who, as these are such regular, everyday kind of names that I would forget what was distinct about my imagined contestant from all the other Brians, Rachels, [name_m]Jacobs[/name_m] out there (if that makes sense). This is where young me started getting interested in names, as I started branching out and using more and more unusual names because they were distinct and I could easily attach them to my characters and no one else, and thus remember them more. So, it wasn’t realistic but I had shows full of characters like [name_f]Arisa[/name_f], [name_f]Faline[/name_f], [name_u]Jubilee[/name_u], [name_u]Ari[/name_u], [name_m]Karim[/name_m], Simeon… and maybe like one [name_f]Jessica[/name_f] lol. Whereas in real life, it would be [name_f]Jessica[/name_f], [name_m]Brian[/name_m], [name_f]Rachel[/name_f], [name_m]Matthew[/name_m], Ashley… and maybe like one [name_f]Calliope[/name_f]. Here’s an actual example from a show I made when I was 11/12: girls were named [name_f]Marlyn[/name_f], Lillybelle, Arianelyn, [name_f]Delfine[/name_f], and [name_f]Georgetta[/name_f]. It was easy to remember those! Now, one of the most recent ones I did had girls that were named [name_f]Sonya[/name_f], [name_u]Abby[/name_u], [name_u]Genesis[/name_u], [name_f]Paula[/name_f], and [name_f]Diana[/name_f]. Still not super generic like for example [name_f]Olivia[/name_f], [name_u]Ashley[/name_u], [name_f]Emily[/name_f], [name_f]Ava[/name_f], and [name_f]Chloe[/name_f], but a lot less “out there” - and I do include more of those super popular ones than I used to, except I usually make their character very memorable for some reason so that I can keep them distinct in my head.

As time went on and I matured, I kind of leaned into a somewhat more realistic naming style for my shows, but as you said, diverse names are all the rage. Parents want their children to be distinct and that is shown in the SSA data, as the percentage of babies given the top name every year continues to diminish (i.e. if you were [name_f]Jessica[/name_f] in 1995 you were much more likely to have another in your class than an [name_f]Olivia[/name_f] in 2022). It’s hard to say exactly what the reason for this is but I bet social media and globalization has had a role to play.

[AveryExtraterrestria]

I totally get what you’re saying, it’s a pet peeve of mine when writers use names that wouldn’t fit the time period or circumstances so I’m glad to see someone paying attention to it lol. If you’re still having trouble coming up with names, what I’d maybe do is look for ones that are rare or interesting but still fit in with the trends of that era. Like for example, I recently met an older guy named Darold, which struck me as a unique name, but certainly didn’t feel modern. There are also older names that have gone out of fashion, ideally old enough that they’re not currently associated with a specifc generation (i.e. Hortense or Burgess, maybe not the best examples but hopefully you get the idea), that wouldn’t feel boring while still seeming like something that could be on people’s radar in the 90s or 2000s.

Tbh I don’t think a Willow or Ash would feel horribly out of place for that time period, I mean I was born in the 2000s and have quite a few peers with those types of names, it just maybe wouldn’t be as common as today. I think you could get away with one or two characters with a more modern unique seeming name, and maybe try to avoid ones that are PARTICULARLY trendy right now. If you’re more concerned about the amount of characters with unique names rather than just what era the names are from, you could also try unique nicknames for more common names, i.e. Mel or Missy for Melissa.

As for why interesting names are more common now, I’d guess that maybe as our society has gotten more progressive, people have started paying less attention to what’s socially ”allowed”, and now even those who do care about that won’t stand out as much if they choose a unique name since it’s become more normal. Also I feel like there’s been more (kinda ironic) social pressure to be “different” in recent years, which isn’t something I could prove with any data obviously, but it does seem like we see more stuff like the whole “not like other girls” thing now than we did say, 20 years ago. But that’s just what I think of first, I’m sure there are lots of other factors too.