Technically, that’s not true: “Dweezil” Zappa’s birth name was originally something semi-normal, until he made his parents change his legal name to be the nickname they’d been using all along .
I grew up with fairly bog-standard first and middle names. My family tended to give you a name like “Boringfirstname Somefamilysurname Jones”. So if your grandmother’s maiden name was Smith, the kid might get named “George Smith Jones”. But my parents decided to give me a cutesy nickname based on the middle name. So if my name were “Jane Smith Jones”, my nickname thus became “Smitti” (not real names, just an example). Nobody else in the world was called that, as far as I can tell to this day. Even immediate family (like, my godparents) could not spell it. Few people, seeing it written down, would pronounce it right.
The one thing my rather vile first grade teacher, a nun who believed that smacking kids around was appropriate for making mistakes (let alone misbehavior) did for me was insist on calling me by my real first name. And, thankfully, it stuck. The parents persuaded two “lay” (not-nun) teachers to use the nickname, but otherwise, “Smitti” was gone except for immediate family.
So that all shapes my opinion on made-up names. If you name your kid something wild just to make the record books, you’re not doing the kid any favors. If you name your kid something that will get him / her beaten up / teased starting from preschool, you are a cruel asshole. If you make up something like “Abcde” you’re not doing anyone any favors. If you take a normal name and deliberately make up a screwy spelling for it, you are not doing the kid any favors. And if you take a name from a popular show, at least try to spell it right (witness all the variations on “Khaleesi” that were popular a year or two back), and bear in mind you are going to give your kid a name that will have the rest of the world wondering what drugs you were on, when that show has been forgotten.
You can find less-common names without having to make shit up.
Anecdotally I am seeing less clustering of the popular names, more variety. I’m a pediatrician and see 20 to 30 kids a day fairly typically. I just skimmed through my schedule of the last two weeks. One day two Tommies and one day two Declans (right after each other oddly enough) but no other day two kids with the same first name. Years past you could bet on most days having a few repeats. Two Liams or Emmas or earlier other top choices.
I think it’s good to have a versatile name. One that yes can go after Supreme Court Justice or Nobel laureate but also with “in the end zone” and on the comedy stage of “Heeeere’s …” And not one that is the trend of the decade. Some names scream the age of the person. A Debbie or Susan is almost always now 60 to 70 years old. Steve not as exclusively so.
Or which will disappear or come back - sure, the Debbies I know are all around 50-60 years old. But my cousin named her daughter Emma 14 years ago - the last Emma I knew before that would be about 120 years old now
But names are strongly associated with race, class, and culture. So a name that might be weird or seem affected in one context might be an asset in another. Take something like “Tamika”. It’s basically a black middle class girl’s name. Its not hard to pronounce or spell, especially in black communities. It does label someone as black. To some people, though, its a weird, made up name, and i am sure there are people who think it’s hard to spell. But I’m really uncomfortable with advising people to name a kid “a name that’s normal to middle class white people”, which is often what they mean by “normal”.
It’s like the way “Ivan” became a Jewish name because Jewish immigrants were encouraged not to use the traditional “Isaac”. That seems ugly, a thong we shpuld discourage going forward.
And , again, my son has a weird nickname (Mars). He has never ever ever gotten any flack about it. Names as a target of mockery are just less of a thing these days.
My name is weird, but like Tamika, pretty easy for a native English speaker to read, say, and spell. I have found it mostly a benefit to have an unusual name. Tamika may face resume discrimination, because the world is bad that way, but otherwise i bet her name serves her very well. And if there aren’t three other Tamikas on her team at work, that’s a real benefit.
My son changed his name to something weird. So i guess he also likes having a weird name.
Currently way up there. Had a fairly brief period of not being at the top '60s to '80s.
In practice we see many of the names that had been old at the grandparents times becoming popular. For me Uncle Julius and Aunt Rose were old. Now the names are fresh and used more.
Problem is , it’s hard to tell when you are giving a kid a not currently popular name if it’s going to be an Emma ( unpopular for a relatively short time) or a Bertha. Same goes for currently popular names - if I’m naming a kid in 1959, I have no way to know if it’s going to be a Susan and will scream her approximate age forever.
No way to know for sure but if you hear the name lots for kids 5 to 10 years older than your child and otherwise have virtually never heard it, it is a good clue.
Susan went from about a thousand a year across the country 1930 (less before, never more) to 38,000 in 1950 and mid 40 thousands for most of that decade before falling off the cliff. It had been in the top hundred names back in the 1880s but it was only in the period of '48 to '65 that it hit top 5, and top 3 in '57 to '64.
I’m betting Susan of 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street helped trigger the real explosion.
True that there is no way to know when a previously forever relatively common name, like Bertha had been, will fall out of favor. That said Bertha is gone long enough now that it may be one celebrity away from rocketing back up! (I’m seeing plenty of Agneses now and even a handful of Ethyls.)
The trick now is predicting what names will become fashionable in the years to come. Probably it’ll depend heavily on the popularity of certain books, TV shows and movies, though nostalgia for past eras could come into play.
If a fascination with Victorian England develops, we could be seeing males increasingly named Ezra, Jasper, Lionel and Zebediah. Girl babies could increasingly be blessed with Clementine, Dorcas and Cordelia.
Incidentally, the above were all popular dog names in Victorian England.*
*17th century popular dog names are unlikely to translate into fashionable baby names in the 21st century, which is a good thing if you don’t want children named Loiterer, Drunkard, Noisey, Ringwood, Juno, Caesar and Jolly Boy.
From The Onion ages ago, purporting to be a news report from the early 20th century:
The name “Adolf” remains the most popular for newborn males throughout the Republic, according to data gathered from birth-rolls. The next most popular monikers are Purvius, Earsworth, Cadwalader and Ebenezer. As for the most popular girls’ name, it remains, for the thirteenth year running, “Sugarbelle,” which also leads the list of names given to mares.
It seems to me to be pretty common across immigrant groups: the first generation names their children names that they feel will assimilate, but a next generation feels secure enough to want to embrace their cultural heritage. I don’t think too many first generation Irish Americans named their children Sinead or Seamus but it is not an uncommon name among those of Irish American heritage now.
This is a joke which only works in the US. In the UK, we pronounce the painter Van Goff, so I was surprised to hear that in the US it’s Van Go, and then my Dutch friend shattered everything by telling me it’s actually pronounced something akin to Ffon Hyoch.
.