A movie remake reveals a radical shift in baby name style.

Author’s note: This article is long in coming. The unplanned site hiatus was due to a concussion (I will never trust door jambs again!) and I am grateful for your patience as I ease back into a more regular writing schedule.

In 1994 the dark action–fantasy film The Crow arrived with a splash. The film’s goth aesthetic, moody rock soundtrack and quotable dialogue met the zeitgeist head on. The tragic death of its star, Brandon Lee, also focused global attention and underlined the film’s deathly themes. The Crow left a lasting pop culture legacy—including a suitably dark and dangerous new baby name.

A Name Is Born

“The Crow” was an undead avenger, a murdered man named Eric Draven who was raised from his grave to right wrongs. The character name Eric, though, didn’t have the style to match. Eric was one of the biggest hits of the 1970s, thus old news by the novelty-seeking standards of 1994. “Crow” wasn’t a realistic name option, but Draven? Bullseye.

Draven put a shadowy spin on the popular sounds of the moment. It merged the sleek, dark Raven (The Crow→D’Raven) with the devilish Damien.  It sounded like a name, even though you’d never heard it before.

In other words, Draven was fresh and interesting but also fit in. Parents took notice. By the next year, the previously non-existent name was one of America’s top 1000 choices for boys.

Undead, Again

Fast forward 30 years. In 2024, Hollywood attempted to resucitate the Crow franchise with a “reinvention” of the original movie. The new film was a critical and box office flop, selling only 6% as many tickets as the original. It came and went in a blink, with little cultural impact and only a modest uptick in baby Dravens. Yet a brand new baby name appeared in American name stats for the first time ever: Crow.

Back in 1994, even a popular film with an avid fanbase wasn’t enough to launch a name like Crow. Parents wanted freshness and novelty, but the sheer non-nameness of the word crow crossed a line. Today, crossing that line is part of the allure. Take a look at some other names that were completely unknown in 1994 but now rank in America’s top 1000:

Chosen
Crew
Crue
Halo
Memphis
Reign
Royalty
Saint
Sevyn
Truce

Perhaps the most telling is Crue, an alternate spelling of Crew shaped by the glam-metal band Mötley Crüe. That band released all of its hit songs in the decade leading up to the original Crow movie in 1994. Yet the baby name Crue only hit the top 1000 list in 2022. Its outlandishness, its un-nameness, is no longer a barrier.

The borders that have always separated names from words and simply letter strings are dissolving before our eyes. Welcome to the age of boundlessness.