I’ve done lots of genealogy on my family going back almost 500 years and I can’t recall a single instance of a girl getting a surname as her first name but have many instances of boys being named that way.
Beauchamp, Taylor, Hope, Dennis, Haws, Tandy, Fountain, Costin, Teague, Risden, Doggett. Almost all concentrated in the 17th and 18th century.
Another trend I noticed was a lot more creativity with names in the middle to late 19th century. I wonder if other genealogists notice that in their family.
My name - Pamela - peaked in the 1960s. I was born in 1961. I only knew one other Pamela my entire life. Now, at my current company, I count 91 Pams/Pamelas in the global email list. Amazing.
It was a joke in a movie. Darryl Hannah’s character in Splash had to come up with a name really quick so she chose the name of the street where she was found, “Madison Ave”. (It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so the description is more than a little murky).
The name “Madison” itself means “son of soldier”.
So there are a bunch of females running around with a warriors name identifying themselves as “sons”, the name itself being derived from a joke in a movie. People!
After some additional thought I realized kids (mostly boys) might have the name Ringo not so much for the former Beatle as for the family name, examples of which might include Johnny Ringo of Gunfight at the OK Corral notoriety. Then it occurred to me that this might be an instance of a name losing a bit of its zip by way of association with outlaws, scoundrels, etc.
As a side note, I’ve wondered if there may be family crests featuring a gallows or some other depiction of an unfortunate end to the ancestor.
I’m a Jessica. Neither Jessica nor Jennifer are Biblical names, but they both have respectable genealogies; the first Jessica was the heroine of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, and Jennifer is the modern version of Guinevere. They’re both romantic, feminine names that probably appealed to the parents of the late 70s/early 80s.
Nitpick: Jessica was not the heroine of that play – Portia was. Jessica stole the ring her deceased mother gave to her father, eloped with a Christian and later sold the ring to buy a monkey. Now, Shakespeare’s audience would have considered her as having been saved, and her father as a money-grubbing old Jew, but when you read it now, most of us feel at least a bit of sympathy for him, and might debate what kind of person Jessica was.
I’ve heard that the popularity of “Jennifer” can be significantly attributed to the character Jennifer Cavilleri in the book, and subsequent film, Love Story.
There’s an alternative explanation on Wikipedia, giving credit to George Bernard Shaw: Jennifer - Wikipedia. Also, perhaps it’s worth bearing in note that Jenufa is the title of a 1904 opera by Janacek.
I’m one of the poor fools who named her daughter without a clue about current popularity. I swear, it is my first child, I wasn’t a member of the club! (Sorry, babybeast)
We did give our daughter a last name as a middle name. It was the name of my husbands grandfather, sort of. He anglicized his name to avoid racism. Since my husband was more like a son to him, but did not have his name, we gave it to our daughter.
Turns out, it may not be a bad idea since we may have to default to that name (which isn’t terrible as a first name) since EVERY FREAKING LITTLE GIRL I SEE IS NAMED KATIE! Although, in my defense, her name is not any variation of Keightleighn that might possibly be out there.
I think the decline of organized religion, especially Catholicism, has made a difference.
I was born in 1961, and at that time, a Catholic family was expected to give each child a saint’s name. That made for a limited pool of names! So, in my grade school classes, all the Irish boys were John, James or Patrick, and all the Italian boys were Peter, Paul, Joseph or Anthony. And all the girls were some combination of Mary, Anne and/or Elizabeth.
And in the mid-Sixties, any kid who had a different name was likely to get the third degree from a nun. “Your name is Colleen? Is there a Saint Colleen?”
Today, nobody (even devout Catholics) feels constrained by religious tradition, and Catholic parents are as likely to name their kids Madison or Dakota (or whatever name is trendy this season). whether or not there’s a Saint Madison or a Saint Dakota.
A Kyla and a Kaylee, one from California and one from South Dakota, both started jobs at my workplace within a week of each other. I found that endlessly amusing.
As for the returning popularity of Sarah, that name’s always been popular in Jewish families, like Rachel, Aaron, Benjamin, David, etc. I’ve met endless numbers of all five throughout my life, though less and less as I’ve associated myself less with the culture. As for grandparents’ names being recycled, it’s a tradition in my dad’s side of the family to use the grandfather’s first name as the grandson’s middle name. (Could be a Jewish thing, too.) So I’m [Hebrew/biblical first name] [Grandpa’s first name] [Last name].
Interestingly enough, my last two sexual partners were a Jessica and a Jennifer, and while I was in the process of a nasty breakup with both of them (yeah, it was complicated), I started at my current job where I had a Jessica and a Jennifer as coworkers. All four are out of my life now, but it felt a rather odd confluence.
I noticed this some time ago with the children of Filipino immigrants here, like the Clarence, Ariane, Anabel, etc. I went to high school with. Could just be that there are a lot more Filipinos than Chinese here, though.
This is pretty common among the Southern old money set. I know women in their 40s and 50s with the first names Briggs, Hunter, etc. after their mothers’ maiden names.
I missed this the first time. If you are a Spaniard who lives in Maryland, then I may very well know you. Otherwise, the name is about to take off in popularity.
Another Jessica here. I replaced a Jessica when I came to my new job, and the girl who has the desk next to me is also named Jessica. There’s another Jessica in the next room over. Out of a group of about 25 people in our office. We go by last name and are all in our early/mid 20s.
My mom used to joke with me that I was named after the song “Jessie’s Girl,” and say she had made a mistake because it’s about a guy named Jessie. Imagine my surprise when I looked it up–that was the Number One song the week I was born!
I wish I could say what makes names popular. It seems that any name I like for a potential child becomes really popular or gets used by someone famous. I used to like Preston, for a boy (when I was a teenager), and then Britney named her kid Sean Preston. I’m close in age to Britney, so maybe she liked it as a teenager too. And in college, I started to like simple, old-fashioned names, and now they’re hugely popular. I don’t know if I can avoid Popular Name Syndrome when I have kids.
