A couple decades ago, parents around the world held their new little bundles of joy. “We’ve settled on Jessica Anne!” They joyfully exclaimed to the nurse. “His name is Daniel Christopher,” They said to friends flocking to the newborn’s crib. “She’s called Jennifer Nicole,” The would smile up at beaming grandparents. The number one name for baby girls in 1992, when some of these now-parents were born, Ashley, made up 1.9% of all baby girls born in the US. Michael, the number one for boys, claimed 2.5% of the country’s infants. As for the percent of children receiving a top five name? 7.5% of baby girls had the names Ashley, Jessica, Amanda, Brittany, or Sarah, while a startling 9.5% of boys had the names Michael, Christopher, Matthew, Joshua, or Andrew. This was a time where popularity was expected. Popularity was desired.
That was a very different era.
Now, the number one girl name, Olivia, and the number one boy name, Liam make up only 1% of all babies born in the US in 2019. The top five baby names for girls can only boast 4.2% of the female infant population, and for boys, the number is the same. Now, parents don’t look around the office for parents who’ve just had a little James and run to name their little boy the same. Now, parents have their heart set on Oliver, then immediately scratch it when they hear that their coworker’s daughter just had a son called Oliver. In a world in which being different is so prioritized, in which being special and unique is valued, picking a different name is equivalent to picking a cool name. But why has this new culture of needing uniqueness sprung up, particularly in regards to naming? Well, social media, as a platform in which you must stand out to earn validation, must play a part in some of it. But there’s another aspect as well, something that likely relates more to names than just the newly required wow factor we see present on social media.
As it is with any polar opposite, there are a bevy of issues that come with both sides of the spectrum. Insanely popular names like Amelia may result in tiring distinguishers from other Amelias in school and sports or clubs such as unwanted nicknames like Amy and Millie, Short Amelia and Tall Amelia, and the obvious Amelia H. and Amelia M, or online accusations of choosing an overused or bland baby name. Very rare names such as Amity or Zahlia have issues of their own, constantly mispronounced as Amy and Dahlia or misspelled as Ematee or Zalea or looked down upon by relatives as crazy and strange. Point being that both sides have their complex issues, and even middle ground popular names borrow issues from both sides depending on who encounters them. Clarissa is sure to get Cluh-reese-uh and Clarisa instead of Cluh-riss-uh, and while some friends and relatives may not have anything to say, someone will always be dissatisfied.
So with mainstream baby names being the dominating naming mentality behind parents in the 90s, the generation coming into children of their own is naming with their own potentially negative experience with their own popular names, and seeing the grass as greener on the other side. So this easily provable theory of 90s kids fed up with their own popular names explains the strange and rapid shift from a large percentage of children receiving top five name to the new value in unique names and smaller percentage of babies coming home from the hospital with top five baby names. After all, my parent’s experience with an uncommon name was a negative one, so I received a top three name. My experience with a popular name has been negative, which results in not only my unhealthy obsession with baby names but also with my own naming lists consisting primarily of rarities.
So will this cycle repeat with children all over the globe with very rare names going for common ones, causing a new sweep of popular favorites in another couple decades, or will the percentages of children with top five names just keep plummeting? Well, I’m going to be exploring these two theories briefly below including the probability, reasoning, and examples for each theory.
The Exponential Increase Theory
Essentially, the exponential increase theory predicts a larger and larger need for uniqueness, to the point where parents aren’t looking for middle-ground names that bridge the gap between popular and rare, but instead baby naming blogs of the future churn out endless advice columns and list requests for unique baby names. The exponential increase theory takes the uptick in uncommon baby name and the way that uncommon names have primarily gotten more and more popular and runs with it, predicting consistency with the graph of unique names.
So where’s the proof? Well, let’s start with some data from 1880. In this year, 30% of baby boys were given the names John, William, James, Charles, or George, a wild number compared to the 4.2% of baby boys receiving top five names today. As for the girls, 15.7% of daughters born to American families were given the top five baby girl names Mary, Emma, Anna, Elizabeth, or Minnie. Obviously, this is a wild jump from the 1992 data we were analyzing previously, so let’s shove some data in between these two vastly different time periods. If we grab some more stats from 1960, we see that 18.2% of baby boys were given the names David, Michael, Robert, John, or James, the top five for that year. The girls boasted a slightly more exclusive 9.5% of baby girls with the names Mary, Susan, Karen, Linda, or Donna.
It’s clear from this data that names in the top five just continue to grow less and less popular, proof of parents continuously choosing more different and unusual monikers for their little ones. But just looking from 1992, when 7.5% of baby girls and 9.5% of baby boys received top five names, compared to now, when the totals are 4.2% for both, that’s a shocking dip in very little time. If we were to average the 1992 values together, that’d be around half. A roughly 50% difference in popularity over the span of about three decades is quite shocking, and in no way compares to the speed of the name difference between 15,.7% of girls with a top five name in 1880 and the 9.5% of girls with a top five name 80 years later. The question is, how can we really continue reducing at such a rate? Will popular names cease to exist? Will all of the top ten just freeze as parents choose one in a million choices and neglect “popular” ones? Although the data is obviously hinting at a slow increase about to take flight in terms of unique names, we’ll have to wait it out for now.
The Name Rejection Theory
Perhaps data in the past hints towards popular choices becoming continuously less seen in future generations of naming, but it’s unlikely that such a theory fully explains the parents needs and wants for a baby name for their little child. This name rejection theory explores the possibility that this next generation will be dissatisfied with their hard-to-pronounce and difficult to spell unique names and go for more classic choices. It takes the huge wave of data proving the unique names have been on the rise and then flips it for a generation of children who most likely dislike the tediousness of the uncommon name their parents have blessed them with and see the grass as greener on the other side (it’s not).
With the flood of Ashleys and Joshuas faced with the task of naming, chances are, they’re tired of their common, mainstream names. Joshua is fed up with being Josh or Joshua W, and Ashley is exhausted from getting Ashleigh, Ashlee, and Ashly. So what do they do when handed their little bundle, at least if they’ve done enough research to fully understand popularity today? Isidora. Windsor. Maybelline. Families who have common names tend to go out-there for a reason. Whatever experience you’ve had with your name, you likely want to tweak it into a positive for a child. Issue being, Windsor gets Winzer, Isidora gets Isabella, and Maybelline gets “Maybe it’s Maybelline” all the time due to the single dominating association. So the logical thing for grown up Isidora to do when given her own little one (assuming that rankings are the same in 30 years)? Ella. Jackson. Logan. Then, presumably, the cycle repeats.
This theory does make more practical sense, as it accounts for both the feelings we see in many parents today, the way parents are naming their children in recent years, and it can possibly repeat forever without any real weirdness going on with what names would make the popularity charts like the exponential increase theory. But unfortunately, it’s hard to back up this cycle with data. The demand for unique names has never been quite as high as it is now, but that means that we don’t have concrete proof of this happening in the past, which leaves some holes in this theory.
That’s all for today, dear readers. I hope you enjoyed this article, and perhaps have a favorite theory or an idea all your own about how the future generation that parents are naming today will name their own children. Thank you so much for sticking around, friends!
Sincerely,
-Delphina Moon