The Baby Name Wizard

Vampire Chic: The Names of Twilight

Laura Wattenberg — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:02:26 +0000

Nothing has greater potential to move baby name style than a teen/tween craze. Just think, thanks to Harry Potter a whole generation on the cusp of procreation now sees Hermione as brainy and Luna as looney. Yet the Hogwarts crew has been limited in its baby name impact, because author J.K. Rowling wasn't targeting fashion with her names. Like Charles Dickens, Rowling crafted eccentric character names for mood, meaning and laughs.

Rowling's successor atop the children's best seller lists has chosen a more fashion-forward path. That makes Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series a potential earthshaker in the baby name landscape.

If you've somehow managed to miss the Twilight phenomenon, it sets up as your classic girl-meets-vampire moon-crossed romance. Your leading lady is Bella, the most symbolic name in the series. It connects to the Beauty and the Beast tradition (La Belle et la Bête), adjusted for 21st-century teenager style. Bella's undead beau is Edward, lending a new edge to that neglected classic. Other characters come in handy name groups: ordinary teenagers named Mike, Lauren and Jessica; dads named Charlie and Billy. But the real naming clout of the series belongs to the supporting vampires.

Meet Edward Cullen's family: Alice, Carlisle, Esme, Emmett, Jasper, and Rosalie. They're not blood relatives, at least not in the traditional sense. They're a close-knit undead clan, with birth dates ranging from the 1640s (Carlisle) to 1935 (Emmett).

Nominations, please: The 2009 Name of the Year

Laura Wattenberg — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:05:14 +0000

Each year, the Baby Name Wizard community looks back at the names that shaped -- and were shaped by -- the year that was.

A Name of the Year nominee can represent a social shift (Barack in 2007) or a stylistic one (Shiloh '06). It can dominate headlines (Katrina '05) or slip subtly into the cultural jetstream (Chuck '07). From babies (Shiloh) to Vampires (Cullen '08) to presidential politics (Joe '08), the competition is open to names from every corner of our culture. Whatever the Name of the Year's origins it should be a miniature time capsule, capturing some part of the zeitgeist in a single name.

Please post your nominations here in comments, and feel free to second others. Criteria for the final choice will include:

- A dramatic change in the name's usage or social meaning

- A reflection of a broader cultural theme, or influence on broader style trends

- Your votes (frequency of nominations, and compelling arguments)

Happy nominating! Look for the official Name of the Year announcement in December.

Read about past Names of the Year:

2008 Name of the Year
2007 Name of the Year
2006 Name of the Year

Composing a series of names

Laura Wattenberg — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:23:44 +0000

Today's baby naming thought of the day comes courtesy of my eight year old daughter. Hearing me comment that each name you choose affects future sibling names, the name-wizard-in-training chimed in with a provocative literary analogy. She pointed me to this quote about writing a book series, from "Paddington Bear" creator Michael Bond's introduction to his Paddington Treasury:

"In the case of a series, the first book is always the easiest; you go wherever your fancy takes you, the world is your oyster. But, and it is a big but, you also set parameters for all the ones that follow."

Setting parameters for the ones that follow. Doesn't your first name choice do just that? Your first baby -- like a totally new book -- is a whole world unto itself. You choose from a vast, unformed universe of options, then that choice defines a space. The space may be stylistic. The name Margaret, for instance, sets you down in the realm of English classics. In other case the space may be shaped by family ties, or by ethnic or religious connections, or by a name's eye-popping uniqueness. The space each name defines also includes some closed doors. Choosing Iva closes the door to Ivy, and Lewis shuts down the passage to Clark.

Counting People, Counting Names

Laura Wattenberg — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:43:45 +0000

Global phone directories are a standard part of my name explorer toolkit. When a user submits a name like Wynagene to Namipedia saying "This is my grandmother's name," a directory search can give me a quick sense of how many other Grandma Wynagenes may be out there. (Answer: not many.) A couple of months ago, I tried out a new search from whitepages.com. It allowed convenient first-name only searches of the U.S., so I was happy to add it to my bookmark list. Until...

Last week, I heard from a PR rep promoting the official release of that tool as a baby name popularity search. They hoped I'd write about it. According to their official press release, whitepages.com is responding to "a growing trend to give babies uncommon names" by "making it easier for parents-to-be to identify unique names for their babies based on popularity rankings" which will "help new parents identify whether or not their desired name is as unique as 'Brooklyn' or 'Seraphina.'" The press release goes on to cite research about the increasing uniqueness of baby names, based on 2007 birth data.

I was so astonished that I did something I've never done before. I called the contact number on a promotional email. I told them, before their official press release, what I'm going to tell you now. They are misleading parents by suggesting that their directory can help identify uncommon baby names. What's more, they are misleading all their users by stating that they're counting the people in the United States with a given name. Their tool does neither.

Surnames that still sound like surnames

Laura Wattenberg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:23:29 +0000

Have you ever met a child named Connolly? How about Barker, or Janson? Most likely not, but if you did I doubt you'd bat an eyelash. So many surnames of the British Isles are used as baby names right now that those fit right in.

That's good news for parents who want to "fit right in." What if that's not your goal? What if you chose Barker because it's your family surname and you want it to sound like a surname, darn it, not like some trendy spinoff of Parker? Or maybe you just miss the buttoned-down prep school style that used to come along with surname-names. When names like Chandler and Dalton have gone mainstream, where's a stuffed shirt afficionado to turn?

Here's one clue. Since quarterback Peyton Manning's first college game, the popularity of the name Peyton -- a traditional surname -- has soared. You can see spikes in the name at notable moments in Manning's career, like a record-setting season and a Super Bowl victory. But...why Peyton? Why not Manning? Manning has plenty of history as a first name, and it gets a double dose of publicity because Peyton's brother Eli is also a championship quarterback.

What Peyton has (and Manning lacks) is an ending from the golden trinity: -n, -r and -y. Today, the vast majority of surname-names cling to those three fashionable sounds. If you're willing to move beyond them, you can still find plenty of names with unadulterated surname style.

Names ending in -ing like Manning are one neglected group. A reader recently wrote to me about a sterling example (no, not Sterling): Fielding. It still has the power to surprise, doesn't it? It may be another British isle surname, but it won't get lost in a sea of Parkers and Peytons.

Death by androgyny? The old name rules meet the new generation

Laura Wattenberg — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:58:23 +0000

It's one of the classic maxims of the baby name business: most parents who like "androgynous" names really like masculine-sounding names for both sexes. Parents of boys carefully avoid anything feminine. When a boy's name starts to show up on the girl's chart, the male version's days are usually numbered. Take a look at the NameVoyager graph of Leslie for a classic example.

In the past decades we've seen an explosion of new androgynous names. In addition to the 65 names that make both top 1000 lists, countless more names are surnames that could go either way (Jensen), new inventions you'd have to guess at (Braelyn), or spelling variations on androgynous names (Kamren and Camren make the top 1000 for boys only, Kamryn only for girls, Camryn both). It's not just individual names used for both sexes, it's a broad androgynous style that's defining a generation of names.

Does that mean an entire generation of names is destined to turn feminine? Will boys eventually find themselves stranded on a tiny name island with nothing but kingly classics and absurdly macho inventions to choose from? Don't panic yet, parents of boys. There are reasons to think that this crop may be different

Remember that the common wisdom on androgynous names comes from a history of long-time male names being adopted by females. Many of today's favorite emerged simultaneously as names for both sexes. What happens when a name starts out gender-neutral? Is one sex destined to "win" the name, or can it maintain a balanced sex ratio over time? And if there is a winner, who wins?

In many cases, these questions end up moot because the trendy names fade away before any resolution. Yet examples are mounting to suggest that the old rules may not apply, and all bets are off.

Call me "Tink": The new adventures of old Tinker Bell

Laura Wattenberg — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:28:32 +0000

First things first: it's Tinker Bell, two words, not Tinkerbell. Has any major star of stage and screen been more consistently misspelled? Perhaps that's a sidways tribute to the naming prowess of playwright and author J.M. Barrie. The name flows so naturally, you can scarcely hear the words.

In fact, Barrie introduced a full lineup of iconic character names in his play and stories about Peter Pan. Captain Hook boiled down pirate tales to their villainous essence. Wendy, a little known nickname, became a girlish standard. And Peter Pan, when you stop to think of it, is just a straightforward linking of everyday boy and untamed, pipe-playing nature spirit...but you don't stop to think of it, because it sounds so natural. Even the Darling family has the timeless feel of fairy tales. Think of Prince Charming before them, and the Dearly family of Dodie Smith's The 101 Dalmations or "Jim Dear and Darling" of Disney's Lady and the Tramp later on.

But it's Tinker Bell who's taking center stage right now. Reader zoerhenne sent me a link about the fairy's upcoming star turn in a new Disney DVD release, Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure.

The Global Hit Name You Haven't Noticed

Laura Wattenberg — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:01:08 +0000

I've talked before about the international style of names -- the smooth classics that are easy to spell and pronounce in many languages, and that have soared in the age of the European Union. Names like Alexander, Anna and Lucas are popular in dozens of different countries. As an English speaker, you can probably feel their fashion energy. They are names of our moment, timeless yet distinctly youthful. As a group, they're five times more popular in the U.S. today than they were in the 1960s.

Yet there's another name with global momentum to rival those fashionable three. It's a boy's name, a biblical classic. A form of it ranks in the top 10 in 22 different countries, including the United States. In fact, it cracks the top 100 in every single country that reports its top 100 names. Have you thought of Matthew yet?

Matthew strikes me as an unusually quiet world beater. Part of that, doubtless, has to do with my American perspective. The U.S. hit its Matthew stride early. The name first hit the American top 100 in 1956, and it has stayed there ever since. It's hard to see a New Classic like that as trendy.

Ledasha, legends and race: part three (of three)

Laura Wattenberg — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:07:55 +0000

Reader advisory: sensitive topics/vocabulary

In parts 1 and 2 on Ledasha, I talked about how fake names can convey real social cues. In most of these stories, though, the social cues go far beyond the names.

Consider the language of the Ledasha tale. Google counts 100,000 results for the punchline "dash don't be silent." (For the linguistically inclined, that's the "habitual be," a distinctive syntactic feature of African American Vernacular English.) You'll also find thousands of similar hits for "dash ain't silent." But when you search for the Standard English version "dash isn't silent" you mostly find explanations in the storyteller's voice, not quotes from Ledasha's mother. The mother's vernacular is intrinsic to the story.

For some perspective on this, let's take a trip back in time. Urban legend resource Snopes.com, in their excellent review of name tales, unearthed a relevant item from a 1917 book of humor. Please excuse the period vocabulary:

A young woman in Central Park overheard an old negress call to a pickaninny: "Come heah, Exy, Exy!"

"Excuse me, but that's a queer name for a baby, aunty?"

"Dat ain't her full name," explained the old woman with pride; "dat's jes' de pet name I calls for short. Dat child got a mighty grand name. Her ma picked it out in a medicine book — yessum, de child's full name is Eczema."

The blithe racism makes us cringe today, but every element of this joke is echoed in modern name tales. The proud, earnest ignorance, the desire to aggrandize, and the vernacular speech are all familiar. Even the misreading of medical jargon remains a popular touch; just swap out eczema for an STD to give it a more contemporary punch.

Ledasha, legends and race: part two

Laura Wattenberg — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:17:39 +0000

Reader advisory: sensitive topics/vocabulary

In the first post on Ledasha, I suggested that many familiar "urban legend" names serve as proxies for talking about race. Names are the perfect vehicle for this because they carry so many subtle cultural signals. Even fake names can have real ethnic identities. Take another read of the Ledasha tale, then try this one for comparison:

A college student comes home for the summer and her shocked parents see that she's obviously pregnant. She tells them that she's determined to finish school on time and that all of her sorority sisters have promised to help her with the baby. Sure enough, come September she's back on campus with her baby son in her arms: little Kegger, named for the place he was conceived.

You've never heard that one before, have you? I thought not, because I made it up. But if you heard it in a different context, I'll bet that you'd follow the social and linguistic cues that point to the family as upper middle-class white people. I chose the name Kegger not just for its meaning, but because it follows stylistic conventions of distinctly white names like Kyler, Bridger and Cooper.

Real name tall-tales aren't about folks like that. They're consistently packed with cues pointing to a non-white underclass, and it all starts with the names. Consider one of the longtime kings of urban legend names: shuh-THEED, spelled S-H-I-T-H-E-A-D. When you hear the name shuh-THEED you know without a shred of context that you're not talking about a white boy.