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Tag Archives: celebrity names

Name News Round Up

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by A.O. in Names in the News

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Baby Center Australia, birth data, birth registries, celebrity names, choosing baby names, fictional namesakes, French names, Kidspot, middle names, name meaning, name trends, names from television, naming laws, popular names, rare names, Starts at Sixty

News

Baby Center Australia has released its most popular names for 2013, with Oliver and Charlotte taking the #1 positions. Names with a strong V featured prominently, including Ava, Evie and Ivy, and X, with Jaxon and Jaxson included along with Jackson. Less common names from the site: Blue, Chevy, Blip and Daxx.

Meanwhile, News Limited looked at data from birth registries all over Australia to see how popular culture is affecting name choices. Some names from Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, NCIS, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory are up, or appearing for the first time. There’s some rubbery figures, with whole groups of names being counted together, and even quite common names like Abby and Catelyn being counted as “pop culture”. Numbers are statistically significant, but overall very low, so no need to panic in regard to popularity. Most interesting factoid: Dexter peaked in 2010 at 67 births, so the chances of this name hitting the Top 100 are slipping away. Also the fairly ridiculous assertion that “popular culture” names will put your child in hospital … Health Department, please release a health warning on names!

Sabrina Rogers-Anderson from Kidspot is French Canadian by origin, and wanted a French middle name for her daughter, so she and her husband chose Fée – French for “fairy”, and pronounced FAY. Unfortunately, when they went to register the baby’s name in New South Wales, they were told that all accents and diacritical marks were forbidden. Rather than name their baby Arabella Fee, they changed the spelling and went with Fae. However, Sabrina believes that the rule is culturally insensitive, as it disallows valid names and spellings from other countries.

Rebel Wylie from Kidspot is expecting baby number three, a boy, and finds that all is not going well in choosing the name. In her tongue-in-cheek article, she claims her husband Andy is not playing fair in the baby name discussions, because he rejects every name she comes up with, but never suggests anything himself. After moaning about it to her girlfriends, it turns out The Sisterhood believes that the mother gets automatic naming rights as the one bonus of an otherwise miserable pregnancy. Rebel enthusiastically becomes a supporter of this theory, and chooses the name herself. She says Andy only gets a say-so if he can come up with something (she likes) better. A lot of angry comments from people who didn’t find it funny, but some interesting ones too.

Starts at Sixty website looked at the top baby names of 1950, with Jennifer and Peter leading the pack. The author of the article opines that in the past, parents were much more interested in tradition and the meanings of names, and chose accordingly, while today parents choose names from favourite places, TV stars, and brand names. I’m not convinced that parents don’t care about name meaning today – I get so many search terms from people looking for a name with a particular meaning. Lots of interesting comments from the 60+ crowd on how their names were chosen – including a Julie who had her name picked out of a hat (meaning and tradition?!) There were also plenty named after film stars, showing that celebrity name inspiration is no new phenomenon.

The Logan Reporter mourns the days when Sally, Jane, David and Brian were popular names. Newsflash from Logan – the 1960s are over. They’re still coping with the time-lag, including some problems with multicultural Australia. Oh dear.

Review of The Baby Name Wizard

08 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by A.O. in Blog Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

baby name blogs, baby name books, Biblical names, celebrity baby names, celebrity names, Hispanic names, Laura Wattenberg, name trends, Nameberry, rare names, Swistle, The Baby Name Wizard, UK name trends, US name trends

BabyNameWizardLogo

Laura Wattenberg is the author of The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby, first published in 2005. If you recall, this is Swistle’s favourite baby naming book, which is a very high recommendation. The Baby Name Wizard is described as a “field guide to American baby names”, in that it doesn’t give definitions or histories of names, but provides lists of names by style, has a popularity graph, and also makes sibset suggestions.

The Baby Name Wizard website was started in 2004 – I guess to promote the book, and create a place where its readers could discuss names.

There is a weekly blog entry from Laura, where she discusses name trends and often does some interesting things with name data and statistics. For example, last month she looked at the name Cressida, and concluded that it already seemed dated, because of the SS sound in the middle, shared with Vanessa and Melissa. Earlier she examined which were the most American and most British names of 2012, noting that the British Alfie and Archie were cuter than the American Landon and Gavin, while American girls Harper and Addison were more androgynous than the British Imogen and Florence.

This seems like a good moment to mention that The Baby Name Wizard is very much about American name trends, and American perceptions of names. For example, she categorises Jenson (a fast-rising name in Britain thanks to Jenson Button), as a “semi-androgynous name”. Yep, Jenson is apparently half-ready to hand over to the girls. Or maybe all-ready to hand over to half of the girls? Or maybe just the Jen half of it is androgynous? (I confess to not really knowing what a semi-androgynous name is).

Another rather glaring example that I hope will suitably rile up my Australian readers is one of Laura’s early blog entries, where she very sensibly defended the celebrity baby name Apple, and pointed out that other celebrities had much sillier baby names … among them, Rachel Griffiths, who had chosen the name Banjo for her child. Pause for patriotic display of righteous indignation.

The entries on statistics are probably my favourites, but I also love her name myth examination and debunking, such as looking at the massive popularity of celebrity name Shirley in the 1930s, how Biblical names are in steep decline, where the name Bree came from, and how there aren’t really twins named Lemonjello and Orangejello.

The Baby Name Wizard is essential for anyone even slightly interested in name trends – and most of these are international trends. Learn about trends such as the “Biblical-sounding” names, the “raindrop names“, and the “huggable names“. But also listen to Laura’s sage baby naming advice not to be a slave to trends. This might sound slightly contradictory, but you have to identify trends in order to not follow them.

The Baby Name Wizard got a forum last year so you can ask questions about baby names, including taking part in baby name games and asking about character names. You will get helpful advice for your naming dilemmas, given with candour but not meanness. In my opinion, the forum was very much needed, as people were using the blog comments to ask for baby name help. (Some still haven’t got the memo).

There are other cool tools as well. The Name Voyager is an excellent popularity graph of names in the United States, which has been copied by England/Wales and New South Wales. There is also a Namipedia to look for more information on a particular name, and a Name Finder to help you find names that suit your requirements. I’ve had a go using this, and found it brings up quite a few names that didn’t fit my requirements.

For example, I asked it to exclude anything very unusual, and it suggested Lovely – a name which has never ranked in the US. It was also quite insistent about me using Hispanic boys’ names, for some reason. However, it did offer some good names too, although I felt that if it was up to the Name Finder, my next child’s name would be either Vorgell or Lorenzo. Lots of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.

You can also sign up and pay for the Expert Name Tools, which are reasonably priced. As these are based on American popularity rankings and perceptions, I really don’t think these are worth it for Australians, except for interest, or if you are doing name research (or moving to America).

The Baby Name Wizard and Nameberry are both websites set up by the authors of baby name books, and I’m guessing most name enthusiasts would belong to both sites, even if they prefer one over the other. It would be insulting to compare them, except to say that they are different enough that you can follow and enjoy both of them, and never feel that you are covering the same ground.

Ruby and Oliver – #1 in Tasmania

13 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by A.O. in Name Data

≈ Comments Off on Ruby and Oliver – #1 in Tasmania

Tags

celebrity baby names, celebrity names, classic names, Irish names, name popularity, name trends, nicknames, popular names, royal baby names, Scottish names, surname names

I’ve been waiting for the top boy and girls to repeat for a state, and at last they have – Tasmania shares its #1 boy and girl names with South Australia.

On the girls’ Top 10 20, Ruby continues to sparkle at #1, and in fact has increased her lead. In 2010, she was used eight more times than the #2 name; last year there were almost twice as many babies named Ruby as the next name down.

The name that increased the most in popularity was Ava, rising ten places from #13 to #3. Amelia and Olivia were not far behind, and Zoe and Sophie made modest rises.

The name falling the most was Mia, going down from #5 to #10; surprising when you think how well she did in other states. Other names decreasing in popularity were Ella, Isabella, Bella, Holly and Chloe.

Grace, Charlotte, Matilda, Emily, Lily, Isabelle and Evie were stable, and Lucy and Imogen didn’t change position.

New to the Top 20 were Stella, Layla, Lilly, Sophia, Hannah, Isla, Sienna, Phoebe and Ellie. Departed were Hayley, Molly, Georgia, Maddison and Paige.

On the boys’ Top 20, Oliver joined Ruby by remaining the #1 name for another year.

Henry went up the most, increasing his position nine places from #17 to #8. Also rising were Samuel, Ethan, Lucas and Xavier.

Tyler plummeted twelve places from #7 to #19, and Harry, Max, Lachlan, James, Charlie, Jack, Thomas and Riley also had significant losses.

Jacob, Cooper, Alexander, Angus, Archie and Oscar remained stable, while William, Noah and Connor didn’t change their position.

I based names’ position on their overall number of uses, as there were so many names sharing position. One of the anomalies of this system is that although there were no new names in the boys’ Top 20, it lost twenty-two names: Joshua, Liam, Logan, Benjamin, Isaac, Ryan, Bailey, Jackson, Mitchell, Hamish, Blake, Jordan, Sebastian, Hunter, Lincoln, Jake, Aiden, Jesse, Zachary, Harrison, Eli and Daniel.

A smaller population obviously leads to much greater volatility, and probably a few rather odd results.

Tasmania definitely has its own style of naming, with more cosy older-style names such as Olive, Esther, Eleanor, Florence, Elsie, Maggie and Meg on the full girls’ list, and a dizzying array of spelling variants. Incidentally, I note that Halle, which was a unique name in 2010, was used six times in 2011 – enough to get it onto the Top 100.

On the boys’ list, surname names seem more prevalent than usual, as well as Scottish and Irish names like Campbell and Rory, and short forms like Tom and Billy. Classic Robert can also be found on the Tasmanian Top 100. The number of babies named Flynn went from 9 to 15, putting it into the Top 100, while Tasmanians seemed immune to the charms of Harper and Savannah.

You can see the spreadsheet with exact numbers of each name at the Links to Name Data page.

 

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