Interesting observations! I’ve been on the side since about 2016 (when I was 13), but lurked a few years before that.
Some things I’ve noticed are:
- Whilst names like Emma, Evelyn, and Sophie were popular back then, there was more of an effort to conform names to be trendier. I’m personally so happy to see a lot of older names coming back like Hazel, Josephine, Pearl, Anne, Barbara, Florence, Clara, Sylvia, Jane, Walter, etc – I remember when a few of these names were so far out people thought they’d stay out. I think some names that could come back next are Ethel, Greta, Warren, Zella, Susanna, Annette, Hiram, Gilbert, etc.
- At least in my IRL circles, I’ve seen a backlash against nerdy inspiration from shows and movies in the last few years. Maybe it’s because there have been babies I know named after names made up for Avatar: The Last Airbender that the mom passed off as being “authentic,” but a lot of people I know are turning away from fandom baby names. When these fandom names tend to be used, it tends to be more from niche fandoms rather than the uber-popularity of drawing names from franchises like Star Wars and Game of Thrones (which was popular when I first came on the site).
- I’ve seen a lot of maximalist names get much more popular on NB than they used to be! Personally, whilst a lot of them might not be my cup of tea, I’ve got to admit that they’re just so whimsical and I’ve gotta appreciate the whimsy!!
- I can absolutely agree with you on the death of traditional legacy naming! So many people I know both on NB and IRL have decided to move away from legacy naming as we know it in favor of originality. I also agree with @Greyblue in that legacy/honor naming has shifted from the “Jr., III, IV, etc.” we’ve seen in the past to adding creativity – one of the most common forms I’ve seen is picking a name with a similar meaning.
- In general, I’ve seen the effort to find a unique baby name to shift away from unique spellings of common names to just… unique names (drawing a lot from history, nouns, and literature on NB). Personally, I prefer the uniqueness of today to the random spellings with copious uses of “y’s,” “leigh,” “x’s,” “ton/tyn,” and “z’s”
- Maybe it’s the Yellowstone effect, but where I live (rural Midwest), there’s much more of an effort to pick very rugged, more modern-masculine names than there used to be. Names like Stetson, Brooks, Rhett, Memphis, Wiley, Wyatt, Remington, Archer, Axel, Striker, etc. are so popular IRL (almost a continuation of the Southern-centered name culture we saw in the 2010s, where the NB culture is more inspired on the global level). What’s wild to me is the complete dichotomy of the “traditional masculinity” these names want to evoke vs. just using traditional names.