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How do some names become suddenly popular and some names suddenly fade? Social scientists have looked at this for years, somewhat inconclusively. Naming in this country does tend to be fairly trend-based, but why?
Pop culture can play a big role.
“In her paper “Brandy, You’re a Fine Name: Popular Music and the Naming of Infant Girls from 1965-1985”, Michelle Napierski-Prancl wondered if there was any correlation between top songs and the names of female children. Indeed, there appeared to be: When Kool and the Gang’s song “Joanna” hit the Billboard Hot 100 List in 1984, the name Joanna shot up in popularity. The same thing happened to “Rosanna” after Toto’s song of that name in 1982. Even some more-unconventional names saw a surge in the wake of a hit song. The names “Candida,” “Windy,” and “Ariel” were so unpopular names for babies that they had never even cracked the top 1,000. But after songs with those names became hummable hits in the 60s and 70s, they all suddenly debuted on the top baby-name charts.”
There have been very popular songs, however, that showed no influence on naming trends.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger showed that politics can have an impact.
There are obvious and more surprising ways that politics can affect naming trends.
“A pair of psychologists noted the long-held stereotype of Western Americans being highly independent, and wondered if it had any effect on baby naming. Sure enough, they found that parents in Northwestern states like Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming were the least likely in the country to pick popular baby names. Meanwhile, another study discovered that some parents appear to use their child’s name as a marker of political partisanship. After Ronald Reagan became president in the 80s, the name ‘Reagan’—previously quite rare—surged in popularity, landing in the top 100 by 2012. Yet there was an interesting wrinkle: The Republican parents were more likely to pick the name if they lived in a district that was purple, and contained Democrats. Living in a solidly red district tended to decrease the chance of naming a child ‘Reagan.’”
American baby names have gotten far more diverse and novel than they once were. To see what names are au courant, here’s the 2019 list of popular names, courtesy of Baby Center.
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