Antique boys’ names can be an elusive target. Past generations of parents just didn’t leave us much to draw on. While girls’ names swung in and out of fashion, the same boys’ classics—John, William, James—dominated decade after decade. If a name never falls out of popularity, it can’t develop vintage […]
Your name has enemies. Don’t blame yourself, it’s nothing that you did. In fact, your name itself is perfectly innocent. But somewhere out there, there’s another name holding a grudge. I learned this from a Twitter conversation started by a Jonah who declared Jonas his name’s natural enemy. When he […]
How deep do you have to dig for a boy’s name that still sounds Scottish to American ears? US parents have already mined Scottish name traditions for generations of hits, from Ronald to Bruce to Cameron. Can there be any fresh, stylish and distinctly Scottish names still left to discover? […]
Amazon put us on a collision course. Not that we couldn’t see it coming—Apple’s Siri had sent early-warning signals years before. With Amazon’s “virtual assistant” Alexa, though, there was no escape. Human names and virtual names met head on, and the human names blinked. Alexa was America’s fastest-falling baby name […]
In my teenage daughters’ generation, American girls named Madison outnumber Bridgets by nearly 20 to 1. Yet my kids have had plenty of classmates named Bridget, and they’ve never met a Madison. A statistical fluke? In part, yes, but the odds were stacked by geography. We live in Massachusetts. This […]
Liam and Emma continue to reign as America’s top baby names. Depending on where you live, though, you might be more likely to meet babies named Amelia and Oliver, or Harper and Grayson. For your browsing pleasure, here are the top 5 baby names in each state. While the top […]
Not every name has the style strength to stick around for generations. This year we say goodbye to 17 of those long-lasting names, as they have dropped off the top-thousand popularity lists for the first time in at least 50 years. In a few cases, it was the first time […]
Meet America’s newest baby names. Each year, hundreds of names make their debut in the U.S. name statistics, meaning they were given to at least five newborn boys or girls in one year for the first time ever. I’ve collected some highlights in notable categories from 2018. Together, they paint […]
As names like Arya and Khaleesi continue their march up the popularity charts, the baby name triumph of Game of Thrones has made headlines. Is that franchise the new naming champion? Harry Potter has reigned as king of fandom baby names for years. The last time I checked in, the […]
I thought the wave had crested. I was wrong. Back in 2007, I first reported on an unprecedented convergence in American baby names: one letter was dominating the boys’ side. Across the style spectrum, everybody wanted their boys’ names to end in N. Almost a third of American boys were […]
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