A while back, Stan (OneSTDV) wrote a post about odd and unusual baby names and what they mean:
But as with most SWPL phenomenon, this younger cohort is mirroring black behavior in a parallel opposition to mainstream white culture. Extreme Hollywood examples such as “Apple”, “Suri”, and “Pilot Inspektor” reflect a growing trend amongst the SWPL class. These effete urbanites eschew mainstream/traditional choices in favor of “unique” and “special” names like Aiden, Elijah, Jayden, Nevaeh, Makayla, and Hannah. Are these choices outrageous? Not really, but they represent a conscious effort to individualize their children by opposing “boring” names that harbor historical sentiment.
I think that there is something to what he’s saying, but I think that he over-universalizes it. Frequently the names are not attempts at individuality at all but are simply following the pack. They heard a name, they like it, they apply it to their child. At least, I believe that’s the case for a lot of the names that he mentions. Elijah and Hannah are in the Bible and names don’t go back much further than that. The fact that they have a sudden resurgence has a lot more to do with herd behavior than an individuality banner.
I think for some of the really original names, that goes under the individuality banner. I don’t know how much of that is actual hostility towards middle America and what is not. When it comes to African-Americans, it obviously plays a role. That they would be unenthusiastic about perpetuating names from a culture with whom they have had a historically contentious relationship is no surprise. With swipples, I think it’s more of a mixed thing. I think some do want to distance themselves from middle America, though I have to say that it has always been thus. Names work their way down the SES-chain. In some cases, it’s less about differentiating from Middle America as it is differentiating from People Poorer Than You. The ultimate rebellion against middle America would be to adopt names that are a poke in the eye of their perceived enemy. If they really wanted to state their opposition to American culture, they’d adopt black names. Few, however, do. That’s why I think it has more to do with basic class dynamics than it does a desire to differentiate themselves from one particular group (“Middle America”). Even though it would not be inappropriate, I would be surprised if we have a whole lot of white Baracks graduating high school 20 years from now. And that guy is not only hated by the people they are supposed t0 be hating, he’s the President of the United States.
And another puncture in the theory is that it’s not just poor blacks and rich white swipples that are adopting these names. The first time I was introduced to a lot of outlandish names, it was in… Deseret. Not rich. Very white. Not hostile to middle America. 70% Republican. And no, they weren’t specifically Mormon names. Indeed, it wasn’t just the Mormons doing it.
Heather Horn from The Atlantic has another interesting post on “original baby names” in which it points out… they’re not that original. Not just insofar as they’re copying others by trying to break the baby norm, but the names follow certain patterns:
You end up with those six names that rhyme with Aidan in the top 100 names of the 2000s, and 38 of them, from Aaden to Zayden, in the top 1,000. The irony is that classic English names such as George and Edward, Margaret and Alice — the names that used to be standard-bearers — all have distinctive sounds. They aren’t prisoners to phonetic fashion; each of them sounds instantly recognizable. Contemporary names, by contrast, travel in phonetic packs. More than a third of American boys now receive a name ending in the letter N. (In decades past, the most popular boys’ names were more evenly split between a number of endings, including D, L, S and Y.)
This strikes at the one reason that I am ambivalent to unique names. Basically, there is value in throwing more names into the mix. As someone whose had name(s) shared with classmates throughout school, I can appreciate the diminished confusion by adding a Laetwyn in with a Lenny. Of course, it’s never worked out that way and the result is that you get classes with 27 Jennifers (a name that was not all that common before) and 15 Jasons. But I thought that the names that were punched up at least offered an alternative to that. Even they, though, have become entirely contrived.
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My kid has a real name that apparently no one but me ever heard of before. I like what it means in German, and I think the nickname is pretty cool. But some people have looked at me as if I might as well have named him “Asswipe Johnson.” Even in this day and age of crazy names. I guess there is a difference betweena newfangled weird name and an old weird name.
I’m annoyed when people try to make a name unusual simply by messing with the spelling. And I’m thinking of white people.
I don’t think black people are showing rejection of American culture by picking the names they pick. Usually they’re either just going with what’s trendy among people they know, or they’re trying to give a nod to their heritage by picking an African name. I can’t complain about that; I have an ethnic name and so does one of my kids. “Imani,” for example, is a genuine African name and I think it sounds nice. Where it gets silly is when people just make up stuff they think sounds kind of African, sometimes by grafting together pieces of names. They end up with something overly … complicated.
I think it would be great if “Barack” caught on, because it’s a real name, and it’s simple and short. From the pool of African names, Obama got really lucky with both his first and last name.
While the Netherlands may be a small country, it has distinctive geographic patterns when it comes to names for babies.
It’s kinda funny, how my name got popular right around the time Star Trek came out. My folks swear I’m named after someone’s grandfather, though.
Kirk Douglas was a big star years before Star Trek came out. Ironically, the name means “church” in Scottish and Douglas is actually Jewish.
Sheila,
It doesn’t follow the same phonetic pattern mentioned in the above article, does it? As long as that’s the case, you get points for originality and throwing new names into the mix.
If Hit Coffee is still around when we have children, I’ve already got their Truman names figured out. I figure it provides me the opportunity to be creative but without saddling any children with a creative name. It’s easier to tell a daughter that their pseudonym was named after a comic book character than it is to say that their name came from there.
The fictitious children in alternate futures I’ve mentioned also have, if not unique names, ones that are generally not in (WASP) rotation at present (Sage, Sophia).
Oh, and I agree on the name Barack. That’s a good addition. I’m a little more mixed on the name Obama as it lends itself to mispronunciation. The President’s middle name is pretty unlikely to catch on…
Kirk Douglas was a big star years before Star Trek came out. Ironically, the name means “church” in Scottish and Douglas is actually Jewish.
Interesting, about KD. However, the only Kirk I know of now in popular culture is Millhouse’s dad in The Simpsons. Seems like my name has fallen off the radar screen, which isn’t a bad thing. I like being rare.
Kirk Douglas was a big star years before Star Trek came out. Ironically, the name means “church” in Scottish and Douglas is actually Jewish.
It’s not his real name. He was originally named Issur Danielovitch, and started using his stage name in the 1930’s.
Kirk Kerkorian* was fairly well-known in the business world before Star Trek came out, but not really a celebrity at the time.
* = about the same age as Kirk Douglas, and another ethnic oddity, this time an Armenian with a Scottish given name
““unique” and “special” names like Aiden, Elijah,”
I’m not sure what Stan is protesting here. Those are old, traditional names. In other times and places they were more common.
“I don’t know how much of that is actual hostility towards middle America and what is not. When it comes to African-Americans, it obviously plays a role. That they would be unenthusiastic about perpetuating names from a culture with whom they have had a historically contentious relationship is no surprise.”
It doesn’t “obviously play a roll”, at least not today (maybe back when there were more blacks named “Freeman” and such). That’s just you intellectualizing. Low income blacks (and even non-blacks in their cultural milieu, an example of which I will provide shortly) seem to chose names for their children that they like the sound of. Someone I know quite well has spent a lot of time working as a nurse in LDRP wards that predominantly serve poor blacks, and that’s been her sense from listening to new mothers pick their kids’ names (middle class and upper middle class blacks don’t generally name their kids this way).
The example I alluded to above is a Caucasian girl I used to work with. Very pretty, Irish & Italian ancestry and sort of olive skinned. The first day she walked in the office, at 19, wearing some inappropriate top (orange colored too, I think), big hoop earrings, and a sort of ghetto bob hairdo. Another girl I worked with (a really smart one who grew up in poor but working class area) said to me, “I’ll tell you right now: she’s got a kid, and the father’s black”. Check and check. And the kid had a name I had name I’d never heard before. It sounded like a certain French word but wasn’t spelled that way.
The new girl (let’s cal her N.G.) turned out to be smarter than she looked. The father of her kid was a deadbeat, and she moved on to better choices in men (she had a long-term relationship with a well-spoken, college educated African American man subsequently). She fairly quickly figured out and adopted appropriate hairstyles and outfits for the office. She went on to get promoted a couple of times, while getting a college degree at night. Nevertheless, she gave off a certain African American vibe, in her speech patterns, in the subtleties of her personal style, etc. Her olive skin tone added a certain ambiguity.
Just so you understand that this “vibe” wasn’t just my imagination, one day N.G., I, and a couple other coworkers went out to lunch in a mall food court, and a group of black teens sitting nearby kept looking over. Finally, a black girl got up and walked over to our table and asked N.G., “Excuse me, but we was wondering what your culture was”. I think she meant “ethnicity” by “culture”, but you get the point.
Reeling this comment back in to my original point, a couple of years later I saw an article in Slate showing the 10 most popular black and white names, respectively, in California. N.G.’s kid’s name was in the black top 10. I showed it to her and she was completely surprised, and also a little taken aback. She said she had picked it because she liked the way it sounded and she wanted a unique name for her kid.
“I like what it means in German…”
Oh, please say you named your kid Schadenfreude. That would be so cool.
Low income blacks (and even non-blacks in their cultural milieu, an example of which I will provide shortly) seem to chose names for their children that they like the sound of.
I don’t doubt that they like the names they’re picking. Much like the low-income white people you and I both mention. However, I do believe that the disconnect between blacks and middle America make blacks more likely to experiment. Less likely to be under social pressure to use typical names. They have minimal investment in or reason to be affectionate towards traditional English and European names.
If I’m wrong, it’s not that I’m intellectualizing so much as projecting. It’s that if I were black, I would be far more likely to choose a name that I “just liked” rather than a stodgy European one.
Uh, I know that. That’s why I wrote that it was “ironic” that he picked a name that means “church” for his stage name.
A funny sidenote. Kirk Douglas changed is name to Kirk Douglas. He had a son named Michael Douglas. Another actor named Michael Douglas had to then change his name and became Michael Keaton.
It’s kind of curious that he chose the name Douglas. Daniels is a much closer name to Danielovitch. When he was a kid he apparently went by the name of Demsky, which could easily be Dempsey… though maybe that was too Irish at the time?
“They have minimal investment in or reason to be affectionate towards traditional English and European names.”
Back when a higher percentage of American blacks were devout churchgoers, they had a reason to be affectionate to traditional biblical names.
“It’s kind of curious that he chose the name Douglas. Daniels is a much closer name to Danielovitch. When he was a kid he apparently went by the name of Demsky, which could easily be Dempsey… though maybe that was too Irish at the time?”
Interesting how times change with that. In a post a while back (“Preoccupied with 1985”) I noted with interest that Italian-American actor in an ’80s show had changed his last name to an Irish one.
The first day she walked in the office, at 19, wearing some inappropriate top (orange colored too, I think), big hoop earrings, and a sort of ghetto bob hairdo.
One part of me would repulsed by her prole traits, while another part of me would find her attractive in a cheap, sexual way…
Her olive skin tone added a certain ambiguity.
Given the metro area’s demographics, I’d imagine that some people would presume that she’s mixed race (black & white or white & “Hispanic”) or Puerto Rican, Italian, or even Greek.
Irish wasn’t a stigma in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Witness James Cagney, Donald O’Connor, Maureen O’Hara, Maureen O’ Sullivan, Spencer Tracy, Errol Flynn, Margaret Sullavan, Tyrone Powers, Mickey Rooney, Bing Crosby, The McGuire Sisters, etc.
Maria, I didn’t *think* it was a stigma, but the Golden Age actors that came to mind were not Irish. Thanks for the list.
Back when a higher percentage of American blacks were devout churchgoers, they had a reason to be affectionate to traditional biblical names.
Biblical names are the exception since they are less Euro-centric (though the exact translation of the name can be). Outside of certain circles, though, few blacks or whites use Biblical names with the Bible in mind, though. People are more likely to be named after Uncle Mark than St. Mark.
“It doesn’t “obviously play a roll”,”
What type of roll were you thinking, Dave? Croissant, dinner, or cinnamon?
“It’s easier to tell a daughter that their pseudonym was named after a comic book character than it is to say that their name came from there.”
So … you’re going to tell your kids you blog? Don’t let your kids tell my kids!
No problem, Will — I actually thought of a few more. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Edmund O’Brien, and a little-known fella by the name of Ronald Reagan.
To be fair all of those names were probably already “Anglicized” long before their ancetors immigrated to the US — or maybe at Ellis Island. “O’Connor” in the original Irish was probably OCaughnnoraugh or something like that. The original versions of most Irish names would not have been Hollywood-friendly at all.
which could easily be Dempsey… though maybe that was too Irish at the time?
More likely, Demsky would have been considered too Jewish-sounding, and that would have been a problem at the time.
Peter, that’s why I was suggesting Dempsey as a replacement of Demsky.
Sheila, I haven’t made any decisions this far in advance. I lean against saying anything, though I’m not sure what the odds are that I would actually be successful at keeping it hidden.
My observation about black naming: One possible cause for oddball black first names is their hyper-common last names. This might push them to “go wild” with the first name… Real names I’ve encountered: JoShaun, Valrie, Regena. Last names: Williams, Brown, etc. etc.
What if they made up last names that were more distinctive than their “slave” names?
I notice that my low-rent forebears on my (white) wife’s father’s side had really oddball first names, so maybe it’s a class issue…
That is a fantastic point.
On a sidenote, I almost deleted your comment without looking at it. I’m glad I looked first. Your username is very much like those that comment-spammers users. Something to be mindful of if you have trouble getting comments through moderation on other blogs.
P.S. A black coworker’s first name was “Khomeini.” I called him on it, “Your mom and dad named you after an Iranian TYRANT?” He said, “It’s a strong name.” Yeah, right. People are nuts!
To borrow from someone else, some names sound good the way Chlamydia sounds good.
Many white British “chavs” have very odd names. If you ever peruse the Daily Mail online, they will often have some feature story on a white British chav family, usually for having 14 kids in 15 years. The kids have names like “Chartreuse” and “Mauve.”
I think it is just that lower-class people are already at the bottom of society, they want flamboyant names to make them feel special.