‘Oscar’ seems like one of those names that started making a comeback in the mid-1990s when there was a fashion to bring back old-fashioned names for infants (e.g. Rachel’s baby daughter being named ‘Emma’ on Friends was indicative of this trend). Fast-forwarding to the 2010s, the prominence of an actor like Oscar Isaac has probably the name retain its cultural foothold.
I was curious and checked the frequency of the kids names on The Brady Bunch. Almost all of the names peaked around the time that the show came out and now not as popular. So, it’s not only muppets. I was going to look at frequency of names of children on current shows that I watch. The only one that I watch with multiple children is The Neighborhood, which has a Grover.
Eh, names come and go. In 1900 my IRL first name ranked 52nd most popular in the U.S. By the time I was born (and named after my father and grandfather) it was 177th. By 2005 it was #704. It’s rebounded slightly, but at least it’s more popular than Kermit or Grover.
When they did the recent remake of The Odd Couple, with Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon, they updated their ex-wives’ names from Blanche and Gloria to Gaby and Ashley. It’s true that you meet a lot more Gabys than Blanches these days.
I’ve often thought they might have also updated Oscar and Felix as well, if the names weren’t so iconic.
Both the name and the incident do not ring immediate bells for me, in fact, even while reading the Wikipedia article, I got his name confused with Grover Washington, who had a hit with Just the Two Of Us around that same time frame.
It’s probably something I had heard about and saw, I just thought it was funny that there was both a famous Kermit and Grover Washington at the same time.
I chuckled when I saw this thread, because just last night I met a Kermit.
Older man, and such an academic that I wondered “If I say ‘Like Kermeet thee Froggg?’ in Kermit’s voice, would it be a tired joke, or a confusing one?” … because I could imagine him never having watched a kids’ show.
I am older than Sesame Street, and all those other names were obscure and old fashioned when i was a kid. Oscar Madison, the “odd couple” character is the only human i was familiar with with that name. (Also Oscar Myer weiners), and Grover Cleveland the only Grover.
Of course, the social security database is definitive for the popularity of names in the US. But boy, my experience matches that. I assume they picked those names because they were weird and obscure, like setting a story far away and long ago. The human characters had normal names, but i don’t recall any of the Muppets having particular normal names. Bert and Ernie may have been closest.
Hmm, I think it’s more likely that it’s just because way more Americans nowadays are of Hispanic descent, and Oscar is still fairly widespread as a given name in Spanish.
And I know more than one young child named Felix, a once-archaic boy’s name which according to NameGrapher is regaining popularity these days.
When I was a child we had a family acquaintace (male) whose first name was Gaylord. Now there’s a boy’s name that’s probably not coming back into fashion any time soon (peaked in 1930s at 50-something per million births, apparently).
Two out of 60 of the new hires I’m coaching at the moment are named Oscar. They were both born in the mid-00s. It was a name that had completely fallen out of fashion when I was a kid but it’s made a come back.
On the other hand, my name was kind of popular when I was a child in the 70s-80s (there was another kid with that name in my class, and another one in our smallish primary school) but it’s almost completely disappeared now. What I liked about it was that it was distinctive but not unusual. Now, I’m afraid it’s going the way of Kermit.
Kermit was almost certainly not in common use as a name before Kermit Roosevelt; similarly Grover wasn’t in common use as a name before Grover Cleveland.
People often adopt surnames as first names in order to honour a relative or some other favoured person; the name Clive, in the UK, is in honour of Robert Clive of India, and arch-colonialist of the 18th century. In some locations it was the usual practice to name the firstborn son after the mother’s family.
I have a friend whose brother’s first name is the mother’s maiden name. There are still people who follow that custom. (Or at least, there were when i was a kid.)
Yes, Wikipedia suggests that was the case with Kermit, which was originally a Manx surname. Presumably it was given to the future Mrs TR in honor of someone, and the President took it from there.
As an aside, I think “Kermit” is a great name. It’s easy to remember and fun to say.
