Name style is a moving target. You can learn as much from the direction names are heading as from their current popularity rankings. And when it comes to fashion in the US vs. England, some names are moving in very different directions.
The Age of Olives marches on! Oliver and Olivia continued their reign as the #1 names in England and Wales in the year 2020. That marks five straight years of dominance for the matching pair, a sign of the power of sound in modern baby name style. On the girls’ […]
Even in this winking mashup of a historical setting, one cultural line cannot be crossed: No proper English lady or gentleman can bear a plain old English name.
Parents choose different names for boys and girls—and they choose names differently for boys and girls as well. For centuries, female names have been more creative and more subject to the shifting winds of fashion, much as female clothing has been. Male names, like male clothing, remained more conservative. Until […]
Britain’s Office for National Statistics has announced the most popular baby names in England and Wales for 2019. The #1 names are unchanged: Oliver and Olivia continue their joint reign as a matching set. The biggest development at the top of the charts is about name endings. The top 7 […]
He’s a duke, he’s a rake, he’s a Sebastian. Welcome to the world of Regency romance.
What is March without a playoff bracket? Baby names to the rescue! Try Namerology’s Name Madness, a one-minute game that challenges your sense of name style. For each pairing, just click on the name that you think is more popular right now. Every name in the bracket , no matter […]
I’ve been banging the drum for many years about the importance of maternal age, in baby name style and far beyond. Most of my name conclusions had to be inferred from community-wide differences in age and naming. Direct data about the ages of parents choosing particular names simply wasn’t available. […]
If you tuned in to the recent historical tv drama Gentleman Jack, you quickly found yourself awash in Anns. The series is based on the real life of Anne Lister, an Englishwoman of the early 19th Century sometimes called “the first modern lesbian.” We meet Anne Lister as she returns […]
Not long ago, Nigel Smith discovered he was an endangered species. Smith had always known that his first name wasn’t the height of fashion. Still, it came as a blow to learn that in a recent year the UK’s Office for National Statistics hadn’t recorded a single newborn Nigel. Zip, […]
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