Posted on 11/22/2011 12:29:09 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I’ve always been fascinated by name trends. It’s interesting to see how certain names ebb and flow in popularity.
The name game is tough to win. If you hop on a trend, it could be cool for the first few years but, chances are, that name is going to feel dated when your child is reaching adulthood. That’s why I’ve always passed over fads for classic names. However, when naming my son a classic name I inadvertently hopped aboard a Hollywood trend. A twofer! Rare!
If you’re looking ahead to 2012 wondering what names are going to be all the rage, look no further. The creator of nameberry.com, Pamela Redmond Satran tells Huffington Post what the hottest trends for 2012 will be.
1. Combining Favorite Names. Most parents try to avoid super popular names. That can be tough when the great names surge up the list and your left between picking a name you love and having your daughter be one of four Avas in her class. The new trend, altering popular names slightly. As Satran says “Number 1 girls’ name Isabella gives rise to stylistically-related choices Arabella and Annabelle; Olivia, the top name in Britain, spawns spelling variation Alivia; Emma and Emily promote brother name Emmett.”
2. A slew of parents are looking to the animal kingdom to give their kids fearsome names. “Bear, Fox, Wolf, Lynx and a range of names from Leo to Lionel that mean lion, and then there are the perhaps-even-fiercer names like Breaker, Ranger, and Wilder.”
3. Sweet vintage names make a comeback. Especially names ending in ie. For example: Lottie and Hattie, Addie, Nettie and Nellie.
4. Modern hero surnames. Satran says Mariah Carey nailed it when she named her daughter Monroe, to honor her heroine, Marilyn Monroe. Other examples of surnames or heros in movies, life and literature used as first names: “Landry (as in football coach Tom), Gatsby (as in fictional hero The Great), and Palin (yes, as in her).”
5. 2012 will be the year of M names, Satran predicts. Examples: “Maeve, Magdalena, Maisie, Marguerite, Marlo/Marlowe, May, Mila, Millie, and Minnie, and for boys, Magnus, Micah, Miller, Milo, Montgomery, Moses and MONICA!
My kids were watching Disney channel yesterday and between shows they did a princess makeover for some kid that won it as a prize. Her name was Notlim. Notlim? Really? Milton, if spelled backward. Must be named after her dad or grandfather. Maybe?
Weird.
My first thought as well. I doubt that any of them have ever read any Fitzgerald.
LOL
"The title for the most rapid case of name contamination had been held by Ebenezer and then Adolph, names that were shunned by parents after they became associated with Dickens's miserly banker and the Nazi dictator Hitler. But while Ebenezer and Adolph each took over 30 years to fall from the Top 1000 after they were negatively associated with their prominent name sakes, Hillary dropped off the charts in just 10 years, upsetting the prior records in less than 30% of the time. Besides this achievement, Hillary also set records for largest drop in a single year (295 places in 1994), two years (420 places in 1993-1994) and ten years (>864 from 1993 to 2002). These titles taken together constitute the grand slam of name poisoning."
In the 90s, I worked with a guy named Rex Rexilius.
It’s true and the mother got mad because the people at school couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it.
>>they need to cut out the weird spellings.<<
Plus you are sentencing your kid to a lifetime of either spelling it each and every time it comes up (”it is Beqkee” with a “q-e-e”) or just having it flat-out wrong.
Ha...I went on a week-long trip in a Winnebago with four guys, and three of us were named “Bob”...you can imagine how quickly we got fed up with that!
Also-if you ever go into the military, God help you if you have a bizarre name that requires lots of explaining for either meaning or spelling. There will likely be lots of time spent explaining things, and nobody wants to be the nail that is sticking up!
In those cases, the children would thank the parents later for naming them “Mark” or “Joseph”...:)
One of my relatives went to school with a girl named Velveeta. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it?
How annoying is it to hear a kid have to say in a bored (because she has said it a gazillion times) monotone something like “It’s ‘Kaylee’ with the ‘y’...”
I always get a kick out of George Foreman - all of his boys (4 or 5?) are named George. I’m not sure, but he may have a daughter named Georgina or Georgette or something.
It’s not KAY-LEE it’s KALE, like the vegetable!
I see your Female and raise you-
Agghanistan(from the local death notices)
Pa’jama-from a magazine article on a woman naming her baby by using ‘pajamas’ in a catalog-and-my favorite-
Toi’let-actually seen on a woman’s work name tag on a local bus.
Compared to those, Tanganika, Teriyaki and LaTwondashonda barely get noticed.
What about Mulva? (Oblique Seinfeld ref).
Kings and Queens never go out of style and never become too trendy either... Henry, Edward, Charles, Phillip, George, Catherine, Anne, Jane, Marie. That has been my strategy. I even had a dog named Louis :)
Of course not. The government gets to decide what is proper and what is taboo. Did you think it was 1798 or something?
Chilling ain’t it?
I’m gonna name my second son “Bexley,” after the Zero-G football champion, James Bexley Speed.
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