Thinking back to high school (farther back for me than I care to admit…), what were the names of the popular boys? [name]Do[/name] you think names influence a child’s friendships & popularity?
The “cool guys” in high school for me weren’t actually cool guy names, haha. Like [name]Dudley[/name] and [name]Chuck[/name]. They sound like total nerd names to me, lol, but they were quite popular.
Erm, some others:
[name]Benjamin[/name] “[name]Ben[/name]”
[name]Joshua[/name] “[name]Josh[/name]”
[name]David[/name] (although he went almost exclusively by his surname, which is quite rare and Latino, so I won’t share it)
[name]Ryan[/name]
[name]Dawson[/name] (his surname, which he went by almost exclusively)
[name]Justin[/name]
[name]Jason[/name]
[name]Ryan[/name]
[name]Brian[/name]
[name]Jake[/name]
[name]Matt[/name]
[name]Jeff[/name]
[name]Travis[/name]
[name]Nick[/name]
Eta: no, I don’t think popularity was based on their names. The ones listed above were popular names of boys…in many cases there were more than one kid with the name and one would be a popular one and then one was in the trouble crowd…same names, didn’t matter.
I went to a very racially and ethnically diverse high school in [name]Brooklyn[/name], so the names were all over the place, really. In my circle, the boys were [name]Ahmad[/name], [name]Calvin[/name], Tihon (prn: tee-ON, he was Russian), [name]Daneel[/name] (Russian), [name]Sasha[/name], [name]Nelson[/name], Maleek, [name]Vincent[/name], Gleb.
Actually, I can’t recall a single Top 100 type name, for girls either! Strange. [name]Even[/name] the not obscure girl names ([name]Nadine[/name], [name]Imelda[/name], [name]Cynthia[/name], [name]Jocelyn[/name], [name]Penelope[/name]) were very uncommon.
I don’t think a name really influences how well-liked you are. If you have an unfortunate personality and an unfortunate name, then that’s no good, and people will be awful about it. (I do recall a lovely girl named [name]Beth[/name] in MS, and everyone would say [name]Beth[/name] has Death Breath. [name]Aren[/name]'t children awful?). If you have a cool personality and an unfortunate name, people kind of get over it or will nick name you. I do think having a fairly common name makes it easy to blend in. Since my middle school was whiter, maybe it helps to say the “popular boys” were named [name]Cameron[/name], [name]Cass[/name] ([name]Cassidy[/name]), [name]Elliot[/name], and [name]Micah[/name], so, not necessarily just [name]Michael[/name] and [name]Jacob[/name] and the like.
I went to a very culturally and economically homogenous school. Popular boys were [name]William[/name], [name]Ryan[/name], [name]John[/name], [name]Andrew[/name] and [name]Justin[/name]. Shocking, eh? There was only one person with an unusual name ([name]Ira[/name]), and he was unpopular because he was on the autism spectrum, not because of his name.
Girls were a similar tale: popular were [name]Kelley[/name], [name]Anna[/name], [name]Christine[/name], [name]Sarah[/name], [name]Cassandra[/name], [name]Jennifer[/name] and [name]Hannah[/name]. Unpopular: [name]Amanda[/name], [name]Emily[/name], [name]Katherine[/name] and [name]Amy[/name]. If there’s a pattern, I don’t see it.
The “popular” guys in my class were [name]Gaines[/name], [name]Wells[/name], [name]Edward[/name], [name]Scott[/name], [name]Matt[/name], [name]Eric[/name] - that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. I love names like [name]Gaines[/name] and [name]Wells[/name]. Too bad DH isn’t on board.
For girls we had [name]Megan[/name], C.C., [name]Mary[/name], [name]Stephanie[/name], [name]Sarah[/name], and the like. My favorite girl name out of my classmates was [name]Ingrid[/name]. 
I think it depends on how diverse your high school was. Our (extremely popular) class president was called Osama -not exactly a name many would now want to emulate. However, super popular name (top 5) in his culture. Others were [name]Travis[/name], [name]Mohammed[/name], [name]Ryan[/name], [name]Jason[/name].
The popular boys in my school had names like:
[name]Daniel[/name] (Several of these)
[name]Justin[/name]
[name]Chase[/name]
[name]Donovan[/name]
[name]Jordan[/name]
[name]Jake[/name] (Several of these)
[name]Johnathan[/name]
- [name]Matthew[/name] “[name]Matt[/name]” - although there were some dorky kids with that name as well. I guess it was just an all around popular name.
- [name]Justin[/name] ( a couple of them)
- [name]Jesse[/name]
- A.J (I think his first name was actually [name]Allan[/name].)
- [name]James[/name]
- [name]Andrew[/name]
- [name]Jan[/name] (he was actually really funny)
- [name]Josh[/name]
- [name]Tyler[/name] (his first name was actually [name]William[/name], but he went by his middle name which was [name]Tyler[/name])
Those are just some I can think of…
EDIT : Just thought I would note that I have been out of high school for about 5 years now.
So I’m a senior in high school now, here are the names of the “popular” boys that I can think of (names are correcting spelling) by birth year (for some reason, I can’t think of any of the boys that were born in 92, must not have made an impression)
born in 1991
[name]Justin[/name]
[name]Mark[/name]
[name]Alexander[/name] x2 (both went by [name]Alex[/name])
[name]Noah[/name]
[name]Skyler[/name]
[name]Mitchell[/name]
[name]Aidan[/name]
[name]Braden[/name]
[name]Adam[/name]
[name]Ian[/name]
[name]Kyle[/name]
[name]Taylor[/name]
born in 1993
[name]Jacob[/name] ([name]Jake[/name])
[name]William[/name] (only went by [name]Will[/name] sometimes)
[name]Chad[/name]
[name]Andrew[/name]
[name]James[/name] ([name]Jamie[/name] sometimes)
[name]Benjamin[/name] ([name]Ben[/name])
[name]Conner[/name]
[name]Reilly[/name]
[name]Samuel[/name] ([name]Sam[/name])
[name]Joshua[/name] ([name]Josh[/name])
[name]Thomas[/name]
[name]Logan[/name]
[name]Brandon[/name]
[name]Ethan[/name]
[name]Kaleb[/name]
[name]Brady[/name]
[name]Austin[/name]
[name]Bradley[/name] ([name]Brad[/name])
[name]Lucas[/name]
I went to an all girl boarding school… BUT we did meet boys sometimes (locally around the school and home at the weekends):
[name]Christopher[/name], [name]David[/name], [name]Jonathan[/name], [name]Sean[/name], [name]Scott[/name], [name]Anthony[/name], [name]Alexander[/name], [name]Gregory[/name], [name]Lee[/name] and [name]Ryan[/name]. The ones I remember, but these were a mix of boys living in [name]Chelsea[/name]/[name]Kensington[/name] ([name]London[/name]) and Buckinghamshire.
Popular guys in my H.S. Class were
[name]Zack[/name]
[name]Jesse[/name]
[name]Jordan[/name]
[name]Beau[/name]
[name]Logan[/name]
[name]Christian[/name]
[name]Drew[/name]
Girls were a lot of the same names
[name]Megan[/name] x2
[name]Olivia[/name] x3
[name]Sarah[/name] x2
[name]Maddy[/name] x3
[name]Jenna[/name] x2
There was only really one boy in my year who was universally popular -the jock with the pretty girlfriend- and he was [name]Bradley[/name]/[name]Brad[/name]. I don’t think names really make a difference to popularity (although if a kid is shy and academic, a name like [name]Dudley[/name] won’t do him any favours) as most other cool boys I know had names that were popular when we were born- [name]Tom[/name], [name]Ben[/name], [name]Dan[/name], [name]Jack[/name] & [name]Adam[/name].
[name]Ryan[/name], [name]Cory[/name], [name]Even[/name] and [name]Nate[/name] are the ones I can remember. (lots of Ryans, I notice)