Why are some names popular?

[kitzune]

A friend of mine is pregnant with her first child. I’m the only other person she knows with kids, and she is absolutely not a name nut. After a little thought, she and her husband came up with the names [name]Ava[/name], [name]Sadie[/name], and [name]Iris[/name] for a girl or [name]Owen[/name], [name]Gray[/name], or [name]Will[/name] for a boy.

So how is it that two people who never thought about names before this come up with such ‘now’ names? Is it the cultural zeitgiest, alien mind control, too much TV? What makes so many people on this site love [name]Tamsin[/name], [name]Larkin[/name], [name]Tessa[/name], and so many other names I thought were fairly unknown? [name]How[/name] does the culture collectively decide that this year [name]Ruby[/name] is really in but [name]Opal[/name] isn’t? (By the way, I’m an anthropologist, so this stuff is totally fascinating for me.)

[irisrose]

It is really interesting! It’s hard for me to imagine, because I’ve always been fascinated with names. I guess people who never think about names just use inspiration from what’s around them-- people they know, television, the news, etc-- and don’t bother researching and obsessing over a perfect name. They probably have an idea of what names are dated (people their age, their parent’s age) or out of style, and want to find something fresh, and as a result all centering towards the same names-- but why those certain names?

Maybe it’s the celebrity and TV influence-- they always seem to be a little bit ahead of trends… it could also be that generations usually trend towards a certain style/sound similarity; for example, frilly names ([name]Olivia[/name], [name]Isabella[/name], [name]Sophia[/name]) and light, airy names ([name]Lila[/name], [name]Isla[/name], [name]Lily[/name]) seem to be in right now, and one leads to another, like [name]Emily[/name]->[name]Emma[/name]->[name]Ella[/name]…

[sarahwrighthere]

I’ve been wondering about that too.
In the age of the internet, with the whole world getting connected, there’s more awareness of the rest of the world.
Resulting from that is a wish for induviduality.
Parents seem to wish that their children should be special, but nevertheless across the globe tend to the same names.
Example: [name]Isabella[/name] and [name]Emma[/name] are also a very popular name here in Europe.
Maybe, in becoming a globalized planet, we’re starting a one-culture society. With hardly heard of names becoming used by celebrities, whose lives we are aware of due to television, it is becoming more accepted to give your own child a more unusual name. As this progresses names from around the world are used everywhere.
So from the enourmous pool of available names, what do you choose? won’t you go for something that gives you a familiar feeling, a name you associate with something positive?
Familiarity and positive associations might come from television, so that’s likely to cause some popularity with names.
[name]Britney[/name] Spears called one of her sons [name]Jayden[/name] and she was in a difficult phase then, so there was a lot about it in the news, newspapers and nmagazines.
Shortly after that (now) the -ayden names spike. That’s hardly a coincidence.
Television makes us aware of names we haven’t heard of before -> Familiarity.
Now come the positive associations. You would think that [name]Britney[/name]'s troubled life would put people of giving their children the same name, but it didn’t. When we look at [name]Jayden[/name], we see familiar letters than are commonly used for names.
The ay-sound sounds positive, doesn’t it?
It has a ring of gay (which used to mean happy, when you’re homophobic, this might be slightly less positive) and hay (sun dried grass, warm summer evenings :] ), even den is an actual word. So [name]Jayden[/name] has a lot going on for it.
It might not work so well elsewhere. There are hardly any words with a y in it in Germany, those that are are mostly borrowed from the english language. [name]Jayden[/name] would seem alien here.
Many of the other popular names here also work elsewhere, like [name]Olivia[/name] and [name]Sophia[/name]. Their combination of o-i-a makes them accessible to many people, they work just as well in [name]Scotland[/name] as they do in [name]Italy[/name].
Another reason to give your child a certain name is because you know someone of that name, who possessed a certain quality.
For example: When I watched Blood [name]Diamond[/name], I started liking the name [name]Maddy[/name] (and thought what a lovely name [name]Madeline[/name] might make), because [name]Jennifer[/name] [name]Connelly[/name] was so beautiful and the character was great, mind you this was before I knew of the popularity of [name]Madeline[/name], [name]Madison[/name] and any other name that can be shortened to [name]Maddy[/name].
I would have chosen that name, without checking popularity, and had I had a baby there’d have been one more [name]Maddy[/name]. While I would have named her that in hope of her growing to be as beautiful and smart as the character in Blood [name]Diamond[/name], many other parents would have named her [name]Maddy[/name] because the just liked the name.
As characters in tv are hardly ever named according to the time they were born in (amazing lack of [name]Sarah[/name]'s and Jennifers in movies, isn’t there?), but rather according to what names are popular, you will get many viewers falling in love with names that are already popular, hence making the name even more popular.
I actually think there was a rise in popularity for [name]Aidan[/name] after the character [name]Aiden[/name] was introduced in Sex and the City.
The reason you will find many [name]Tamsin[/name]-fans on this site is that we like to search for beautiful names, we raid name lists, read articles and discuss, we are bound to stumble upon all kinds of names and with that our idea of “an unknown name” changes to “a name WE never heard of” and those become fewer the more time we dedicate to this hobby of ours.
We, as scholars of names, dislike ”ber popular names, because we know of the amount of names there are, names that are more beautiful, quirky and cool than those that many parents seem attracted to. As we can never have enough children to satisfy our name-giving desires (would you really want 35 kids, just so you can use all your favourite names?) we are desperate for other people to give their children beautiful names, so that the names we like, but never got around to using, don’t die out.
We are not your avarage person.
Allright, I distrust long posts, because there’s sure to be a bit of mindless babble in it (and I apologise for that), but I hope I made a little sense

[jenagain]

my thought-- some names are popular for the same reason some songs are popular. A combination of catchy, association, and tired of hearing the one that’s been at the top of the charts for four weeks.

So, to see this principle at work-- take [name]Jennifer[/name], the quintessentially overused name, and figure out where it came from.

Everyone knows that in 1970, ‘[name]Love[/name] [name]Story[/name]’ came out, and the heroine was ‘[name]Jennifer[/name]’. But that alone probably wouldn’t be enough to catapult a name from obscurity to the #1 spot.

So I think the real story here is the name that [name]Jennifer[/name] unseated-- [name]Lisa[/name]. [name]Lisa[/name] had was #1 from 1962 to 1969. [name]Mary[/name] claimed that top spot from 1953 to 1961, but prior to that, [name]Linda[/name] had been the top name since 1947.

So my theory here is that the same things that made [name]Linda[/name] the belle of 1947 drove [name]Lisa[/name] to stardom in 1962-- two-syllable names that start with L and end with A.

Where did [name]Linda[/name] come from? The same place as [name]Sandra[/name], which probably got some juice from [name]Sharon[/name] and [name]Susan[/name].

So, let’s go back to 1969/1970. [name]Lisa[/name] was #1 in 1969 and had been for 8 years. [name]Jennifer[/name] was #2 in 1969, but she’d been hopping up the list over the last decade or so. What was driving [name]Jennifer[/name] up? I imagine that ‘Camelot’ helped give it a boost , but Camelot wasn’t released until 1967 and [name]Jennifer[/name] was in the top 10 in 1966. [name]Jennifer[/name] moving up was probably more a function of [name]Donna[/name], [name]Linda[/name], [name]Susan[/name], [name]Patricia[/name], [name]Karen[/name], [name]Pamela[/name], [name]Sandra[/name], etc falling down the list. In fact, in 1965, there were 15,206 Jennifers born. It was the 20th name in the US. In 1966, there were 18,216 Jennifers born. It was the number 10 name. 3000 babies nationwide resulted in a 10-spot jump.

What did [name]Jennifer[/name] have that [name]Dawn[/name], [name]Denise[/name], or [name]Lori[/name] lacked? I’d imagine it’s the association with the [name]Jane[/name]/[name]Jean[/name]/[name]Joan[/name] names, which have always been very popular. It seems like an elaborate version of an old favorite.

So I think [name]Jennifer[/name] #1) sounded familiar #2) got a boost from pop culture (Camelot and [name]Love[/name] [name]Story[/name]) and #3) was rising at a time when the first wave of post-mary names were starting to sound a little stale. That’s the magic formula.

When [name]Jessica[/name] unseated [name]Jennifer[/name] in 1985, it would have had all the appeal of [name]Jennifer[/name] (three-syllable, distinctly feminine J-Name) without the hassle of there being so many of them around.

So, where did the current names come from?

I’m looking at the 1985 list. [name]Jessica[/name], [name]Ashely[/name], jennifer, [name]Amanda[/name], [name]Sarah[/name], [name]Stephanie[/name], [name]Nicole[/name], [name]Heather[/name], [name]Elizabeth[/name] and [name]Megan[/name].

I’d say that [name]Elizabeth[/name] gave way to [name]Isabella[/name] ([name]Isabella[/name] is a form of [name]Elizabeth[/name]) with a boost from Twilight. I’d say [name]Sophia[/name] came from the [name]Sarah[/name] love. [name]Madison[/name] probably owes some of her popularity to [name]Megan[/name]. [name]Emma[/name] probably owes her popularity entirely to [name]Emily[/name], which seems to have risen as parents got tired of [name]Jessica[/name], [name]Ashley[/name] and [name]Jennifer[/name]…

On the boy’s side, [name]Jacob[/name] and [name]Jayden[/name] came from the same place as [name]Jason[/name], [name]Josh[/name], [name]Justin[/name], etc-- those J names are impossibly popular, to the point that they all seem more popular than any of them really are because they’re so similar.

So in general, I think it’s a combination of avoiding ‘the popular names’, and having similar-sounding ones nearby, and occasional bumps from outside influences.

I also think that on the girl’s side at least, there’s been some influence from women in history. The generation currently naming their daughters is the first generation that studied women alongside men. so the traditional names are less ‘great-aunt abigail’ and more ‘[name]Abigail[/name] [name]Adams[/name]’.

[sweetpea]

I think many people are swayed by celebs. If the celebs pick a name, it suddenly becomes acceptable and it then increases in popularity. I don’t think that way, but most people do. Other than that, they just flock to whatever is socially accepted instead of trying truly bold names. As long as other people like it, it’s a “good” name.