What shall we name Junior? What year is it?

June 21, 2024 1:34 PM

Looking at the endings of names and how they rank by decade. A WaPo gift article, from their Department of Data, shows the move from from Ashley to Ashleigh.
posted by PussKillian (29 comments total)

NYT, recently: "Have we reached peak baby name?" (← gift link), which reports that there's a person in Minneapolis who is a full-time baby name consultant whose services start at $295 for a five-minute session of personalized name suggestions.
posted by msbrauer at 2:19 PM on June 21 [3 favorites]

If you crave less data and more snark over modern baby names, check out /r/tragedeigh
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:32 PM on June 21 [4 favorites]

“A lot of people hire me to find a name that was only used, like, less than 25 times last year.”
Recently Ms. Kline helped a client land on the name Woods.

I encountered a kid named Woods just this week.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:35 PM on June 21 [6 favorites]

That was surprisingly interesting! (As was the phrase "moving her hands like a conductor or someone pantomiming a swimming squid").
posted by trig at 2:35 PM on June 21 [2 favorites]

I encountered a kid named Woods just this week.

Welp time to switch it up and go with Sylvania
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:10 PM on June 21 [4 favorites]

My sister wanted to name her first boy Aloysius, but in the delivery she switched to Aidan. I don't know which would be worse... Her second son was going to be Human Race, which I kind of love, but again she switched last minute, this time to Griffin. In both cases the final name was seemingly pulled from the air in the moment.
posted by Illusory contour at 4:16 PM on June 21 [5 favorites]

All my kids just have binary numbers for names, no baby name consultant needed. Now, if anyone needs me, I'll be over gloating in the corner
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 5:05 PM on June 21 [1 favorite]

I encountered a kid named Woods just this week.

Ha. I worked with a Woods in 1998 at an advertising agency. She was in her thirties at the time. I'm pretty sure it was a family surname.
posted by thivaia at 5:50 PM on June 21

There’s a hospital nearby that has a video board out front where it posts the names of the babies recently born. The girls’ names have lately tended toward quite lovely, old-timey, lyrical names. The boys, though, are almost still uniformly those midwest “manly” names...Brockton, Brayton, Colton, etc.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:12 PM on June 21 [1 favorite]

a person in Minneapolis who is a full-time baby name consultant whose services start at $295 for a five-minute session of personalized name suggestions.

Good for them. If we have to live a criminally unequal society it's nice to see people carving out niches bilking rich morons.
posted by star gentle uterus at 6:51 PM on June 21 [11 favorites]

I just sent a friend a list of 8 potential first names and 13 potential last names for his dwarf sorcerer, so maybe I should get in on this racket.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:03 PM on June 21 [8 favorites]

Naming a child, Ms. Kim explained, has become for many people an extension of personal branding. “A baby name is just one facet of your personal style, in the same way home décor and clothing is part of your style,” Ms. Kim said. “In our parents’ day, the elements of your personal style were known by your close friends and maybe your neighbors, your family, but your style wasn’t showcased on a larger scale to acquaintances and strangers in the way that is the norm now.”

I quit the internet goodbye
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:59 PM on June 21 [9 favorites]

anybody out there naming a baby? because i have found the perfect name and you can use it.

first name: sperry
middle name: topsider

you’re welcome
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:04 PM on June 21 [3 favorites]

I remember the first time we got mail addressed to Little eirias. I saw her wallet name on the box and I felt a sense of unreality, like, how can that be a real person?, we just made that name up. Not that the name itself is unusual — having the power to name a whole person is just incredibly strange. Second only to having the power to create them in the first place.
posted by eirias at 4:54 AM on June 22 [10 favorites]

Not that the name itself is unusual — having the power to name a whole person is just incredibly strange. Second only to having the power to create them in the first place.

to be cautious let me be clear I'm only saying this about the general situation and not about you or your naming practices: ``You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog. You need a license to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reamin' asshole be a father. '' (mr keanu in parenthood)
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:46 AM on June 22 [1 favorite]

My spouse is a Hungarian-Romanian and I wanted to give our son a Hungarian first name so bad. But she said (quite fairly) that when the kid was like thirteen and mad as hell to be walking around a suburban Illinois school dubbed something like Attila or László, it was her he was going to be pissed off at, even if it was entirely my doing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:23 AM on June 22 [4 favorites]

(I do still think that with a little confidence and the right haircut, 24 y/o Attila would be tearing through the dating scene like... well.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:36 AM on June 22 [8 favorites]

I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to tell Attila that he was named after the organ and drum heavy metal duo which included a young Billy Joel.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 8:58 AM on June 22 [3 favorites]

(I do still think that with a little confidence and the right haircut, 24 y/o Attila would be tearing through the dating scene like... well.)

On the one hand, the people I know with names I find beautifully unique universally chafed under them throughout childhood. To the extent that any of them get to enjoy their own names, it is in spite of the relationship they had to their names during incredibly important developmental windows where they wanted nothing more than to be similar to their peers. A few of these individuals who now have adult values are able to appreciate the value of their name to other adults. These individuals are highly visible, but rare enough to be notable.

On the other hand, I am questioning everything I know about my sexual orientation at the prospect of a life where I greet my love Attila with “Hi Hun.” When our children go through a goth phase, I stumble to relate to them by reminding them one of their fathers had actually been pretty involved with the Ostrogoths when he was younger. Attila’s career takes off but our relationship strains with his increasingly frequent business to Europe, marked in his calendar only as “Ravage.” But eventually I realize he always crosses the Danube back to me. We grow old and pass time watching game shows rehashing issues that seemed important in our youth. Attila grows animated every time Who’s Rhine is it Anyways comes on. I pat him on the arm tenderly, appreciating a life well lived as I tell him “oh hunny.”
posted by 1024 at 10:56 AM on June 22 [10 favorites]

On the one hand, the people I know with names I find beautifully unique universally chafed under them throughout childhood.

I'll add my anecdata: my friend and I both have unique names and both loved them all along. Despite having the option we did not use our more normal middle names (provided by our parents as an escape hatch).
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:26 PM on June 22 [2 favorites]

I remember an article I read (I think the advice column in Good Housekeeping) back in the late 1970s. The writer was asking advice about naming a baby (keep in mind, this was long before parents knew whether they were expecting a boy or a girl) and the advice was to keep in mind the "timelessness" of a name. For example, if you name your baby girl "Farrah" (Charlie's Angels was all the rage at the time) everyone will know pretty much how old she is when she's in her 40s and trying to fudge her age.
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:03 PM on June 22 [2 favorites]

Our kid has a friend named Tsunami. Problematic. Though another kid we know is named Bèla (which I do like) and shortly before our oldest was born we met a baby named Blaise (pronounced ‘Blaze’ by his very ‘Christian’ parents who named him after Blaise Pascal.). We named our kids with names that would work in any ‘euro’ language. Though my partner put the kibosh on “Werner” (after any of a number of famous Germans though Herzog was foremost) I’m still kinda on the fence about it: said child has informed me it would have been not-good and he would have been not-happy. (He was more succinct. My even thinking about that as a viable name he and his friends find hi-larious)
posted by From Bklyn at 1:21 PM on June 22 [1 favorite]

My oldest was named for his paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather and nothing has made me question that decision until today, when the concept of "Sperry Topsider Lastname" feels like a missed opportunity
posted by Kwine at 3:25 PM on June 22 [3 favorites]

"Unique or rare² names accounted for 86% of all baby names in 2022 [in Canada]."

2: "Fewer than 5 children with the same name".

Above quotes can be found on the lower right of Canada's most popular Baby Names in 2022[Statistics Canada].

Also from Stats Can there's the Baby Names Observatory where you can enter a name, and sex then see the popularity over decades.

And this page where you can get table data for all names in a given year, or a span of years, but there's a cap on the export size.
posted by ecco at 6:56 PM on June 22 [1 favorite]

I'll add my anecdata: my friend and I both have unique names and both loved them all along.

Emmy Rae, your sample of 1 boosts my n by double-digit percentage points. Thank you for sharing your datum and reminding me to be extra-careful with absolute statements, especially with people. It was irresponsible to write “universally” when I should have specified “a decent number of people who immediately come to mind from an extremely biased sample.” It is not lost on me that you even qualified your lived experience as anecdata when I had just confidently declared the opposite.

I’ve connected a few dots and suspect this may be a specific blind spot for me that I’m going to have to actively work to counter. I wouldn’t have been able to make those connections without your comment. Thank you for pushing back and challenging what I wrote.
posted by 1024 at 10:22 AM on June 23 [3 favorites]

I would challenge you to find a name more timeless than sperry topsider, but the fact of the matter is that you can’t
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:04 PM on June 23 [2 favorites]

So - one time I was half asleep watching Mr Rogers, and he was talking (I guess?) about a schoolbus driver, but I misunderstood and thought he said "We're going to get a visit from our friend Schoolbus" and thought about it, and like... That doesnt' sound half bad with my last name. So I told people I was gonna name my first kid "Schoolbus" they told me "no no no don't do that".

While it wasn't my first kid, my first username at an actual Internet ISP (as opposed to Compuserve) was schoolbus.

Later, I decided I wanted to name my daughter "Gaia Matrix" first because "Gaia" hippie shit, and this was before "Matrix" the movie, but not after I read Neuromancer (I believe). But... I had read that Matrix the term was bounded by the same root as Meter "To Measure" and Mother earth/Geo- so it was like Geometry but... "cooler man".

I am glad I never had kids, and they should be glad too.
posted by symbioid at 6:53 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]

OH oh oh - I'm reminded of the time (sorry re-reading the thread, and nobody has commented since, but I'm not trying to double post, just - the mention of the hospital posting baby names reminded me...)...

1997/1998 there was an ad for the newborns at the hospital, I assume for the preemies and nicu type work, not just "look someone had a baby". And one of the babies was named "Sarin". This was just a few years after that whole "Sarin gas attack" in Japan and my brain just kept wondering if they were aware or if anyone told them after the fact or what, but man, it was slightly disturbing.
posted by symbioid at 10:18 PM on June 23

I had the best of both worlds - I was a Genevieve in a world of Jennifers, but I went by Jenny until I got older and got a slightly different nickname and also used my full name more. No teasing about the name, but then I was at international schools or schools in areas with a lot of diversity, so there were a lot of people with a lot of much more unusual-in-American-contexts names.
posted by PussKillian at 11:55 AM on June 24