8 ms·

The epic rise and fall of the name Heather

85 points by nikbackm 8y ago

peter303 8y ago
As a middle age person myself I find it interesting that names from my grandparents generation are back in fashion again after practically unheard of in my generation. No one one wants an odd-sounding name. Hence why the lyrics to Johnny Cash's Boy Named Sue song are interesting.
- skummetmaelk 8y ago
  Soon there will be many young Bernards and Doloreses running around. Hard to wrap your head around.
  - bookofjoe 8y ago
    My two-year-old grandson Henry has that Shakespearean king look already.
    - JasonFruit 8y ago
      Many two-year-olds do.
- liotier 8y ago
  > No one one wants an odd-sounding name Odd-sounding name are specifically what I looked for when naming my daughters. No one wants a banal name !
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > No one wants a banal name ! Someone clearly wasn't an introverted 6th grader whose dream was to have no one notice them for the entire school year.
    - kibwen 8y ago
      I recommend that parents give their children ordinary-sounding first names and interesting middle names, and then call them by their middle name colloquially and let them use their first name for banal tasks such as government forms and job applications, or if they decide they don't want to stand out. :)
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        I really like that. In interviews they are Robert, and at home they can be Percival if they want.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      So true...I was "Brett" growing up and to this day the number of "Brett"s I've heard of is less than a dozen. As a kid I loathed it and promised myself I'd change to a nice "jim" when I was old enough. Not only was I a victim of bullying and felt my name made me stick out, but the kids would call me "Brat" while the adults used "Brent" or "Bret", and I truly thought the unusual name made it all worse. As an adult I don't particularly like my name, but I do appreciate being unusual. When another "Brett" does show up in conversation or text, I take a second to realize it isnt about me. (The current US supreme court nomination has been less than fun in an extra way for me) I cant imagine how different it must be to have a common name and default to assuming that your own name probably means someone else. I used to sit next to a Bob Smith, and everytime he called someone new on the phone for work (we did that back in the day) he had to follow up with "no, for real".
      - abledon 8y ago
        In 4,5th,6th grade my plan was to change my name to the letter ‘X’ when I grew up. “ that’s soooo coool!” plays some mega man
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Parents like odd-sounding/-spelt names for their children. Often the children, when old enough, are not quite so on-board with having to spell their name multiple times in any situation in which it helps to transmit it to others. When none of your friends can spell your name, and everyone in your locality pronounces it wrong when reading it, then Diarmaid, your parents - IMO - chose poorly. Of course that raises the question of translation, transliteration, and language specific names (first-language Chinese speakers in the UK seem always to have a Western name - my friend says she got hers from her English teacher).
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    > No one wants a banal name ! A lot of people do. Not saying this is the case here, but picking unusual names can be unwise and harmful to children [1][2][3]. Please be careful and considerate of what your children might think in the future. [1] https://www.parenting.com/baby-names/name-advice/why-picking-unusual-baby-names-may-harm-your-children https://www.parenting.com/baby-names/name-advice/why-picking... [2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/parenting/all-parents-should-beware-creative-baby-names---just-ask-my-son/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/parenting/all-parents-sho... [3] https://nypost.com/2017/05/12/your-babys-unique-name-might-ruin-its-life/amp/ https://nypost.com/2017/05/12/your-babys-unique-name-might-r...
  - moate 8y ago
    Plenty of people do. My first and middle names are 2 of the most common men's names for the last 40 years and I'm fine with that. Your daughters may well grow up agreeing with you or resenting you. If you'd named them Jennifer and Mary they may have thanked you for not leaning into a trend and picking something stupid like Apple, or they may always yearn to be unique and different. TL;dr- YOU don't want a banal name for your children, but you have no idea how that's going to work out long term.
    - Fordrus 8y ago
      I have a depressingly banal name and have experienced pretty serious annoyance about it. I wouldn’t say depression, but when society already makes me feel like a faceless drone, being <banal name>#476 exacerbates the problem substantially.
  - cafard 8y ago
    The problem that one finds is that suddenly many parents want the same odd-sounding names for their offspring. My parents never had classmates named Lisa, but I had plenty such. There were no Caitlins around when I was in school, but there were a lot when my son got there. I have a hard time thinking of comparable trends in boys name--I suppose Justin was one that was suddenly popular around 1990.
    - amyjess 8y ago
      I've usually heard Tyler as the boy's name that goes hand in hand with Caitlin.
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    Exotic names are your parents expressing themselves through you, when you might prefer to express yourself... yourself. IMO banal names from different time periods that still work today are best.
    - thousandautumns 8y ago
      > Exotic names are your parents expressing themselves through you All names are your parents expressing themselves through you. I also fail to see how one can no longer express themselves due to a given name.
      - ahartmetz 8y ago
        > All names are your parents expressing themselves through you. I mean that parents can restrain their self-expression by picking an inconspicuous name. > I also fail to see how one can no longer express themselves due to a given name. OK, I overstated my case. I was only referring to the name drawing unwanted attention at first impressions (maybe not even meeting in person).
  - Fordrus 8y ago
    I love a good name, one that is spelled such that many/most native speakers of the language will pronounce it approximately correctly when they see it, and isn’t too difficult to spell, but also lets a person feel a baseline differentiation - to not be drone#6472567. I am <banal name>#4235862, and I DO find that annoying. Often cannot even differentiate me from the many holders of my name by adding my last initial, or even my entire last name.
    - abledon 8y ago
      I really get pissed when popular software takes on humann names. Like for example , the name “Siri”, Alexa, Cortana are all dead names now and the poor souls who are named that right now!!! Also people named Jason who work in tech (.json files)
      - amyjess 8y ago
        I wasn't aware Cortana was ever a human name. I find "Jason" hilarious because I have multiple coworkers with that name... I wonder how often they turn their heads whenever someone talks about JSON. Fortunately, where I live, almost everybody pronounces JSON with stress on the second syllable (jase-ON / [d͡ʒɛɪs'ɒn] or [d͡ʒɛɪ'sɒn]) so it's not quite a homophone. I have a friend who works for a company where people actually do pronounce JSON like "Jason", and he's ranted to me so many times about how the way his coworkers pronounce things is weird (he's also ranted about how they pronounce "epoch" like "epic"). And at least Siri isn't used much in the Anglosphere... I still feel sorry for people in Nordic countries who can't use that name anymore, but I honestly didn't even know it was a human name until after the Apple product came out. Oh, and my cousin has a kid named Alexis. Somehow, I have a feeling that they will never ever get an Amazon Echo. It would be too awkward if Alexa pipes up whenever she's trying to talk to her kid.
        wtetzner 8y ago
        I think you can change a setting to get the Echo to reply to "Amazon", "Echo", or "Computer" instead.
    - 8y ago
  - amyjess 8y ago
    Funny thing is, I actually got to pick my name as an adult (I'm transgender). I made sure that my new first and middle names were both common for my birth year. Both names were in the top 20, and my middle name was actually #2. I actually did consider an uncommon name for my middle name, though. In fact, the name I was considering wasn't so much uncommon as it was unheard of outside of fictional characters. I figured I could have a normal name as my first name, go by that, and only write out my middle name if I wanted to have some fun. Ultimately, though, I got cold feet. I was worried I'd regret it if I picked a name, even a middle name, that called so much attention to me, and I ended up using as a middle name a name I'd previously considered for my first name but ended up very narrowly rejecting. It worked out for the better. I like my initials better the way things ended up: AJB forms a nice three-letter ligature, while ASB doesn't. And I have a good pen name that I've started using on occasion for projects I don't want to use my real name on (e.g. anime fansubbing).
    - scrumper 8y ago
      I have a lovely story from a friend of mine from France. He was christened with a very ordinary first name but no middle name. He always felt that he'd missed out on a middle name. Well, about the age of 10 he started to pester his parents to be allowed to have a middle name. They agreed that if he could choose one and he didn't change his mind, he could have a fully legal middle name for his 16th birthday. Sure enough, he chose a name immediately and stuck to it. And that is why the middle name on his passport, driver's license, tax return and bank statements is Crocodile.
  - astura 8y ago
    I'm very glad I have a common ("banal") name, I don't want to stand out for the wrong reason. I don't want to come off as uneducated and unemployable (like it or not, and for whatever reason, people with uncommon names are less educated and have lower employment). With a common name I'm noticed and remembered for my personality/attributes and not my name.
    - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
      Yeah, but you have to admit "Chlamydia" has an exotic Mediterranean sound to it. ;-)
- macintux 8y ago
  My father's parents: Wilbur and Cleytus, the latter of which doesn't even show up in babynamewizard.com. I don't think those will be back in fashion any time soon.
  - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
    Cletus, of which Cleytus may be a variation, has a long Christian tradition going back to the third Pope, St. Cletus (also known as Anacletus, which makes me wonder if his evil twin was named Katacletus).
mixmastamyk 8y ago
Interesting, just watched the movie Heathers on Netflix a few days ago. Not what you'd expect out of a late 80s teen movie, besides the shoulder pads, haha.
- ecocentrik 8y ago
  Heathers was only barely a counterculture movie when it was released. It's a dark comedy that follows the 80s underdog vs bullies trope. I can't imagine how anything like it would ever be released in the repressive school shootings era and that's probably not a good thing.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Though a musical version of Heathers did come out just a few years ago.
    - ecocentrik 8y ago
      I missed that.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        It was a smaller musical--off-broadway. I think it's playing in London at the moment. Not bad although it felt a bit unnecessary as a lot of musicals adapted from fondly remembered films seem to be.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Agreed, my mind was boggling as I considered how much more gritty and “real” most entertainment is today, yet here was a character nonchalantly using a gun in the cafeteria… now beyond the pale.
groestl 8y ago
Even more fun with names: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-age-when-all-you-know-is-her-name/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-ag... (2014) HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7817959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7817959
ironic_ali 8y ago
When I lived in Scotland, there was a weather presenter called Heather and every night after the news it was (insert Scottish accent) "Heather with the weather!".
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> Liquid sounds are those that involve using the tip of the tongue and create air flow through the mouth. English sounds satisfying that definition: th t d l sh ch j and arguably r Sounds that are actually liquids: l and r
- m-i-l 8y ago
  The "r" is an interesting one. I only recently found out that the "r" isn't pronounced in many words by most of the English in England. It was thanks to some homework that one of my children came home with. It had a list of homophones for them to practice, and on that list were "saw" and "sore", which both me and my wife thought must have been added by mistake because for both of us "saw" and "sore" have distinct pronunciations. So we did a bit of research. What we found was that English as spoken in England is considered "non-rhotic" where the "r" isn't pronounced before a consonant or at the end of words (hence "saw" and "sore" are both pronounced "sau"), whereas myself and my wife come from countries where the language / accent is "rhotic" and the "r" is pronounced (so "saw" and "sore" are pronounced as they are spelled).
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    >What we found was that English as spoken in England // Ha, there's such variations in accent it's quite hard to make statements like this that apply generally. Some like to add "r"s where they don't exist too: Bath - barth vs ba-th. Strangely my mother and [only] one of my sons both have this more RP approach to pronounciation.
    - buckminster 8y ago
      They are not adding an r. That's a long a. True, they are pronouncing bath like many English people would pronounce barth; but that is without an audible r.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        It's not rolled, but if you don't call that an "r" sound then there's no "r" in many areas of UK. It's different to a long a, it's like a shortened "r" with no roll and the tongue further forward, but not as hollow as a long a. Presumably you think "hearth" doesn't have discernible "[a]r" sound either?
Theodores 8y ago
Recently the UK Office of National Statistics released the 2017 baby names, having a niece born last year this was of great interest to me so I know the dataset quite well. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsgirls https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... So that is 43 Heathers born last year in the UK. Not very many, however, compare that to the 106 Margarets born last year. Margaret is an unpopular name, however, Margaret was all the rage a century ago, Prime Ministers and Royal Family members are testament to that. But nowadays the name has gone the way of 'Adolf' (of which zero were brought into the world in the UK last year). What I find most interesting about names in the UK is when you have to identify yourself in hospital, with the police or anywhere else where they have access to the 'full database'. Even if you have an extremely common first name then the authorities only need to know your surname and your date of birth to have a pretty good idea who you are and what your National Insurance number is. Add the town or hospital of your birth and they have an exact match. Unless your name really is 'John Smith' and you give your birth town as 'London' there is no chance that the police will be getting you confused with anyone and even then the other 'John Smith' characters can probably be eliminated from enquiries very easily. The police, secret services and others needing to go undercover go to extraordinary lengths to get the birth certificates and other particulars of 'dead babies' that died a long time ago without distressing anyone except their mothers. You wonder why they do this rather than just make up any old name. Surely they could ask the passport people to just make up an appropriate passport and get the DVLA (drivers licence people) to do likewise? Well no, the statistics are quite hard to fiddle, you wouldn't be able to just fake a 'Heather' or even a 'John' as people really are not as anonymous as you might think.
- nindalf 8y ago
  In the book The Day of the Jackal, this is covered well. The assassin goes to a cemetery, looks for gravestones of infants who would have been the same age as him and finagles that child’s birth certificate using info from a local vicar. With that, he’s able to get all the other documents, including a passport. And then he’s off to assassinate people.
  - 8y ago
madengr 8y ago
Watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers last week. I wonder when Dorcas will be popular again?
hudibras 8y ago
Every time Baby Name Wizard is mentioned, I have to post the link to the most interesting blog post ever written: http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2007/7/where-all-boys-end-up-nowadays http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2007/7/where-all-boys...
- ihuman 8y ago
  > More on this in the months to come... What came of this?
  - jackhack 8y ago
    Last updated 2006. Obviously I can't speak for the original researcher but I can contribute this: in the past 12 years, in England, variations of Mohamed have become the most common boys' name, putting a rather distinct and punctuated end to the dominance of the traditional "big four" (George, John, James, Edward).
    - aleksei 8y ago
      It's not quite that simple: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/21/oliver-olivia-most-popular-baby-names-second-year-running https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/21/oliver-... Relevant quotes: > Muhammad was the 10th most popular name for boys, but if the alternative spellings of Mohammed or Mohammad were included, it would be about as popular as Oliver and its variants, such as Olly, across England and Wales, the ONS said. > Muslims make up about 5% of the UK population, but Muslim families are more likely to call their sons Mohammed than any other name with an Islamic tradition, the data suggested.
  - hudibras 8y ago
    One update from 2012: http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2012/5/the-shape-of-boys-names-an-update-on-the-age-of-aidan http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2012/5/the-shape-of-b...
stuff4ben 8y ago
I'm a mid-40's single guy and blonde Heather's are my thing (dating one right now). Probably because there were so many of them growing up and that influenced me somehow. There are quite a few Heather's on Match.com as well. So it's looking good for me!!!
crazygringo 8y ago
> Quartz examined the names that were once among the top five for girls or boys and then fell out of the top 1,000. Among the eight names that met this criteria, which all happened to be girl names, Heather had the fastest descent. Interesting... I knew baby names followed fashions, but do girl names follow fashions much more quickly than boy names? And would it also somehow be related to women's clothing fashions seeming to also change far more quickly than men's?
- kibwen 8y ago
  Try playing around with this interactive graph, hosted on the same site mentioned in the article: www.babynamewizard.com/voyager . Not exactly a refutation of your hypothesis, but it does seem to indicate that both boy and girl names are following the same trend of increasing diversity over time, leading to reduced absolute dominance of any given name. If those trends are the same, and if we assume that both parents are just as involved in the naming process regardless of boy or girl, then it may be that there's not much of a difference in the faddishness of names. If I were to propose a counter-hypothesis, it may seem as though boy's names are less faddish because of cultural tendencies to name children after biblical figures, of which there are many more men than women. Names like e.g. Matthew, Timothy, Benjamin are more-or-less timeless because of this (though of course they'll still wax and wane like any other), whereas people seeking girl names are relatively out of luck: you've got Mary, other Mary, um... Delilah (if you're okay with the whole "treachery" thing)... strangely Eve has never seen the same enduring popularity as Adam. In a similar vein, it seems that boys are more prone to be named after ancestors, for which I offer the anecdotal evidence of how few women are "Juniors" compared to men. (And all of this is assuming western culture, I have no clue as to naming practices elsewhere.)
  - amyjess 8y ago
    > whereas people seeking girl names are relatively out of luck: you've got Mary, other Mary, um... Delilah (if you're okay with the whole "treachery" thing)... strangely Eve has never seen the same enduring popularity as Adam. Just off the top of my head: Deborah, Esther, Leah, Rachel, Rebecca, Ruth, Sara(h) Maybe if you just want to stick to the NT you'll be limited to Mary (and "the other Mary" has evolved into Marlene in modern times). But I'm not really sure... I grew up Jewish, so I'm not too familiar with what is and isn't in the NT.
amyjess 8y ago
It's interesting that "Betty" is on the list. I'd always thought it was a nickname for Elizabeth, not a standalone name in its own right.
- astura 8y ago
  It's both a diminutive of Elizabeth and a name in and of itself. Same with Betsy and Liz. Betty can also be a diminutive of Beatrice or Bethia. Betty White is Betty and Betty Ford is Elizabeth. There's no "rules" that you can't name someone a name that was traditionally a diminutive of another name, and it's not even particularly uncommon. Alex is common as both a diminutive of Alexandria, a diminutive of Alexandra, and a name of its own. Zach/Zack/Zac can be a diminutive of Zechariah, Zachary, Isaac, or a name in its own right. Max can be short for Maximilian, Maximus, Maxim (which is a shorter form of Maximus), Maxwell, or it can be just Max.

85 points by nikbackm 8y ago

As a middle age person myself I find it interesting that names from my grandparents generation are back in fashion again after practically unheard of in my generation. No one one wants an odd-sounding name. Hence why the lyrics to Johnny Cash's Boy Named Sue song are interesting.

skummetmaelk 8y ago
Soon there will be many young Bernards and Doloreses running around. Hard to wrap your head around.
- bookofjoe 8y ago
  My two-year-old grandson Henry has that Shakespearean king look already.
  - JasonFruit 8y ago
    Many two-year-olds do.
liotier 8y ago
> No one one wants an odd-sounding name Odd-sounding name are specifically what I looked for when naming my daughters. No one wants a banal name !
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > No one wants a banal name ! Someone clearly wasn't an introverted 6th grader whose dream was to have no one notice them for the entire school year.
  - kibwen 8y ago
    I recommend that parents give their children ordinary-sounding first names and interesting middle names, and then call them by their middle name colloquially and let them use their first name for banal tasks such as government forms and job applications, or if they decide they don't want to stand out. :)
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      I really like that. In interviews they are Robert, and at home they can be Percival if they want.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    So true...I was "Brett" growing up and to this day the number of "Brett"s I've heard of is less than a dozen. As a kid I loathed it and promised myself I'd change to a nice "jim" when I was old enough. Not only was I a victim of bullying and felt my name made me stick out, but the kids would call me "Brat" while the adults used "Brent" or "Bret", and I truly thought the unusual name made it all worse. As an adult I don't particularly like my name, but I do appreciate being unusual. When another "Brett" does show up in conversation or text, I take a second to realize it isnt about me. (The current US supreme court nomination has been less than fun in an extra way for me) I cant imagine how different it must be to have a common name and default to assuming that your own name probably means someone else. I used to sit next to a Bob Smith, and everytime he called someone new on the phone for work (we did that back in the day) he had to follow up with "no, for real".
    - abledon 8y ago
      In 4,5th,6th grade my plan was to change my name to the letter ‘X’ when I grew up. “ that’s soooo coool!” plays some mega man
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Parents like odd-sounding/-spelt names for their children. Often the children, when old enough, are not quite so on-board with having to spell their name multiple times in any situation in which it helps to transmit it to others. When none of your friends can spell your name, and everyone in your locality pronounces it wrong when reading it, then Diarmaid, your parents - IMO - chose poorly. Of course that raises the question of translation, transliteration, and language specific names (first-language Chinese speakers in the UK seem always to have a Western name - my friend says she got hers from her English teacher).
- antidesitter 8y ago
  > No one wants a banal name ! A lot of people do. Not saying this is the case here, but picking unusual names can be unwise and harmful to children [1][2][3]. Please be careful and considerate of what your children might think in the future. [1] https://www.parenting.com/baby-names/name-advice/why-picking-unusual-baby-names-may-harm-your-children https://www.parenting.com/baby-names/name-advice/why-picking... [2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/parenting/all-parents-should-beware-creative-baby-names---just-ask-my-son/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/parenting/all-parents-sho... [3] https://nypost.com/2017/05/12/your-babys-unique-name-might-ruin-its-life/amp/ https://nypost.com/2017/05/12/your-babys-unique-name-might-r...
- moate 8y ago
  Plenty of people do. My first and middle names are 2 of the most common men's names for the last 40 years and I'm fine with that. Your daughters may well grow up agreeing with you or resenting you. If you'd named them Jennifer and Mary they may have thanked you for not leaning into a trend and picking something stupid like Apple, or they may always yearn to be unique and different. TL;dr- YOU don't want a banal name for your children, but you have no idea how that's going to work out long term.
  - Fordrus 8y ago
    I have a depressingly banal name and have experienced pretty serious annoyance about it. I wouldn’t say depression, but when society already makes me feel like a faceless drone, being <banal name>#476 exacerbates the problem substantially.
- cafard 8y ago
  The problem that one finds is that suddenly many parents want the same odd-sounding names for their offspring. My parents never had classmates named Lisa, but I had plenty such. There were no Caitlins around when I was in school, but there were a lot when my son got there. I have a hard time thinking of comparable trends in boys name--I suppose Justin was one that was suddenly popular around 1990.
  - amyjess 8y ago
    I've usually heard Tyler as the boy's name that goes hand in hand with Caitlin.
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  Exotic names are your parents expressing themselves through you, when you might prefer to express yourself... yourself. IMO banal names from different time periods that still work today are best.
  - thousandautumns 8y ago
    > Exotic names are your parents expressing themselves through you All names are your parents expressing themselves through you. I also fail to see how one can no longer express themselves due to a given name.
    - ahartmetz 8y ago
      > All names are your parents expressing themselves through you. I mean that parents can restrain their self-expression by picking an inconspicuous name. > I also fail to see how one can no longer express themselves due to a given name. OK, I overstated my case. I was only referring to the name drawing unwanted attention at first impressions (maybe not even meeting in person).
- Fordrus 8y ago
  I love a good name, one that is spelled such that many/most native speakers of the language will pronounce it approximately correctly when they see it, and isn’t too difficult to spell, but also lets a person feel a baseline differentiation - to not be drone#6472567. I am <banal name>#4235862, and I DO find that annoying. Often cannot even differentiate me from the many holders of my name by adding my last initial, or even my entire last name.
  - abledon 8y ago
    I really get pissed when popular software takes on humann names. Like for example , the name “Siri”, Alexa, Cortana are all dead names now and the poor souls who are named that right now!!! Also people named Jason who work in tech (.json files)
    - amyjess 8y ago
      I wasn't aware Cortana was ever a human name. I find "Jason" hilarious because I have multiple coworkers with that name... I wonder how often they turn their heads whenever someone talks about JSON. Fortunately, where I live, almost everybody pronounces JSON with stress on the second syllable (jase-ON / [d͡ʒɛɪs'ɒn] or [d͡ʒɛɪ'sɒn]) so it's not quite a homophone. I have a friend who works for a company where people actually do pronounce JSON like "Jason", and he's ranted to me so many times about how the way his coworkers pronounce things is weird (he's also ranted about how they pronounce "epoch" like "epic"). And at least Siri isn't used much in the Anglosphere... I still feel sorry for people in Nordic countries who can't use that name anymore, but I honestly didn't even know it was a human name until after the Apple product came out. Oh, and my cousin has a kid named Alexis. Somehow, I have a feeling that they will never ever get an Amazon Echo. It would be too awkward if Alexa pipes up whenever she's trying to talk to her kid.
      - wtetzner 8y ago
        I think you can change a setting to get the Echo to reply to "Amazon", "Echo", or "Computer" instead.
  - 8y ago
- amyjess 8y ago
  Funny thing is, I actually got to pick my name as an adult (I'm transgender). I made sure that my new first and middle names were both common for my birth year. Both names were in the top 20, and my middle name was actually #2. I actually did consider an uncommon name for my middle name, though. In fact, the name I was considering wasn't so much uncommon as it was unheard of outside of fictional characters. I figured I could have a normal name as my first name, go by that, and only write out my middle name if I wanted to have some fun. Ultimately, though, I got cold feet. I was worried I'd regret it if I picked a name, even a middle name, that called so much attention to me, and I ended up using as a middle name a name I'd previously considered for my first name but ended up very narrowly rejecting. It worked out for the better. I like my initials better the way things ended up: AJB forms a nice three-letter ligature, while ASB doesn't. And I have a good pen name that I've started using on occasion for projects I don't want to use my real name on (e.g. anime fansubbing).
  - scrumper 8y ago
    I have a lovely story from a friend of mine from France. He was christened with a very ordinary first name but no middle name. He always felt that he'd missed out on a middle name. Well, about the age of 10 he started to pester his parents to be allowed to have a middle name. They agreed that if he could choose one and he didn't change his mind, he could have a fully legal middle name for his 16th birthday. Sure enough, he chose a name immediately and stuck to it. And that is why the middle name on his passport, driver's license, tax return and bank statements is Crocodile.
- astura 8y ago
  I'm very glad I have a common ("banal") name, I don't want to stand out for the wrong reason. I don't want to come off as uneducated and unemployable (like it or not, and for whatever reason, people with uncommon names are less educated and have lower employment). With a common name I'm noticed and remembered for my personality/attributes and not my name.
  - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
    Yeah, but you have to admit "Chlamydia" has an exotic Mediterranean sound to it. ;-)
macintux 8y ago
My father's parents: Wilbur and Cleytus, the latter of which doesn't even show up in babynamewizard.com. I don't think those will be back in fashion any time soon.
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  Cletus, of which Cleytus may be a variation, has a long Christian tradition going back to the third Pope, St. Cletus (also known as Anacletus, which makes me wonder if his evil twin was named Katacletus).

mixmastamyk 8y ago

Interesting, just watched the movie Heathers on Netflix a few days ago. Not what you'd expect out of a late 80s teen movie, besides the shoulder pads, haha.

ecocentrik 8y ago
Heathers was only barely a counterculture movie when it was released. It's a dark comedy that follows the 80s underdog vs bullies trope. I can't imagine how anything like it would ever be released in the repressive school shootings era and that's probably not a good thing.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Though a musical version of Heathers did come out just a few years ago.
  - ecocentrik 8y ago
    I missed that.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      It was a smaller musical--off-broadway. I think it's playing in London at the moment. Not bad although it felt a bit unnecessary as a lot of musicals adapted from fondly remembered films seem to be.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Agreed, my mind was boggling as I considered how much more gritty and “real” most entertainment is today, yet here was a character nonchalantly using a gun in the cafeteria… now beyond the pale.

groestl 8y ago

Even more fun with names: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-age-when-all-you-know-is-her-name/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-ag... (2014) HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7817959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7817959

ironic_ali 8y ago

When I lived in Scotland, there was a weather presenter called Heather and every night after the news it was (insert Scottish accent) "Heather with the weather!".

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> Liquid sounds are those that involve using the tip of the tongue and create air flow through the mouth. English sounds satisfying that definition: th t d l sh ch j and arguably r Sounds that are actually liquids: l and r

m-i-l 8y ago
The "r" is an interesting one. I only recently found out that the "r" isn't pronounced in many words by most of the English in England. It was thanks to some homework that one of my children came home with. It had a list of homophones for them to practice, and on that list were "saw" and "sore", which both me and my wife thought must have been added by mistake because for both of us "saw" and "sore" have distinct pronunciations. So we did a bit of research. What we found was that English as spoken in England is considered "non-rhotic" where the "r" isn't pronounced before a consonant or at the end of words (hence "saw" and "sore" are both pronounced "sau"), whereas myself and my wife come from countries where the language / accent is "rhotic" and the "r" is pronounced (so "saw" and "sore" are pronounced as they are spelled).
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  >What we found was that English as spoken in England // Ha, there's such variations in accent it's quite hard to make statements like this that apply generally. Some like to add "r"s where they don't exist too: Bath - barth vs ba-th. Strangely my mother and [only] one of my sons both have this more RP approach to pronounciation.
  - buckminster 8y ago
    They are not adding an r. That's a long a. True, they are pronouncing bath like many English people would pronounce barth; but that is without an audible r.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      It's not rolled, but if you don't call that an "r" sound then there's no "r" in many areas of UK. It's different to a long a, it's like a shortened "r" with no roll and the tongue further forward, but not as hollow as a long a. Presumably you think "hearth" doesn't have discernible "[a]r" sound either?

Theodores 8y ago

Recently the UK Office of National Statistics released the 2017 baby names, having a niece born last year this was of great interest to me so I know the dataset quite well. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsgirls https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... So that is 43 Heathers born last year in the UK. Not very many, however, compare that to the 106 Margarets born last year. Margaret is an unpopular name, however, Margaret was all the rage a century ago, Prime Ministers and Royal Family members are testament to that. But nowadays the name has gone the way of 'Adolf' (of which zero were brought into the world in the UK last year). What I find most interesting about names in the UK is when you have to identify yourself in hospital, with the police or anywhere else where they have access to the 'full database'. Even if you have an extremely common first name then the authorities only need to know your surname and your date of birth to have a pretty good idea who you are and what your National Insurance number is. Add the town or hospital of your birth and they have an exact match. Unless your name really is 'John Smith' and you give your birth town as 'London' there is no chance that the police will be getting you confused with anyone and even then the other 'John Smith' characters can probably be eliminated from enquiries very easily. The police, secret services and others needing to go undercover go to extraordinary lengths to get the birth certificates and other particulars of 'dead babies' that died a long time ago without distressing anyone except their mothers. You wonder why they do this rather than just make up any old name. Surely they could ask the passport people to just make up an appropriate passport and get the DVLA (drivers licence people) to do likewise? Well no, the statistics are quite hard to fiddle, you wouldn't be able to just fake a 'Heather' or even a 'John' as people really are not as anonymous as you might think.

nindalf 8y ago
In the book The Day of the Jackal, this is covered well. The assassin goes to a cemetery, looks for gravestones of infants who would have been the same age as him and finagles that child’s birth certificate using info from a local vicar. With that, he’s able to get all the other documents, including a passport. And then he’s off to assassinate people.
- 8y ago

madengr 8y ago

Watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers last week. I wonder when Dorcas will be popular again?

hudibras 8y ago

Every time Baby Name Wizard is mentioned, I have to post the link to the most interesting blog post ever written: http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2007/7/where-all-boys-end-up-nowadays http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2007/7/where-all-boys...

ihuman 8y ago
> More on this in the months to come... What came of this?
- jackhack 8y ago
  Last updated 2006. Obviously I can't speak for the original researcher but I can contribute this: in the past 12 years, in England, variations of Mohamed have become the most common boys' name, putting a rather distinct and punctuated end to the dominance of the traditional "big four" (George, John, James, Edward).
  - aleksei 8y ago
    It's not quite that simple: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/21/oliver-olivia-most-popular-baby-names-second-year-running https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/21/oliver-... Relevant quotes: > Muhammad was the 10th most popular name for boys, but if the alternative spellings of Mohammed or Mohammad were included, it would be about as popular as Oliver and its variants, such as Olly, across England and Wales, the ONS said. > Muslims make up about 5% of the UK population, but Muslim families are more likely to call their sons Mohammed than any other name with an Islamic tradition, the data suggested.
- hudibras 8y ago
  One update from 2012: http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2012/5/the-shape-of-boys-names-an-update-on-the-age-of-aidan http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2012/5/the-shape-of-b...

stuff4ben 8y ago

I'm a mid-40's single guy and blonde Heather's are my thing (dating one right now). Probably because there were so many of them growing up and that influenced me somehow. There are quite a few Heather's on Match.com as well. So it's looking good for me!!!

crazygringo 8y ago

> Quartz examined the names that were once among the top five for girls or boys and then fell out of the top 1,000. Among the eight names that met this criteria, which all happened to be girl names, Heather had the fastest descent. Interesting... I knew baby names followed fashions, but do girl names follow fashions much more quickly than boy names? And would it also somehow be related to women's clothing fashions seeming to also change far more quickly than men's?

kibwen 8y ago
Try playing around with this interactive graph, hosted on the same site mentioned in the article: www.babynamewizard.com/voyager . Not exactly a refutation of your hypothesis, but it does seem to indicate that both boy and girl names are following the same trend of increasing diversity over time, leading to reduced absolute dominance of any given name. If those trends are the same, and if we assume that both parents are just as involved in the naming process regardless of boy or girl, then it may be that there's not much of a difference in the faddishness of names. If I were to propose a counter-hypothesis, it may seem as though boy's names are less faddish because of cultural tendencies to name children after biblical figures, of which there are many more men than women. Names like e.g. Matthew, Timothy, Benjamin are more-or-less timeless because of this (though of course they'll still wax and wane like any other), whereas people seeking girl names are relatively out of luck: you've got Mary, other Mary, um... Delilah (if you're okay with the whole "treachery" thing)... strangely Eve has never seen the same enduring popularity as Adam. In a similar vein, it seems that boys are more prone to be named after ancestors, for which I offer the anecdotal evidence of how few women are "Juniors" compared to men. (And all of this is assuming western culture, I have no clue as to naming practices elsewhere.)
- amyjess 8y ago
  > whereas people seeking girl names are relatively out of luck: you've got Mary, other Mary, um... Delilah (if you're okay with the whole "treachery" thing)... strangely Eve has never seen the same enduring popularity as Adam. Just off the top of my head: Deborah, Esther, Leah, Rachel, Rebecca, Ruth, Sara(h) Maybe if you just want to stick to the NT you'll be limited to Mary (and "the other Mary" has evolved into Marlene in modern times). But I'm not really sure... I grew up Jewish, so I'm not too familiar with what is and isn't in the NT.

amyjess 8y ago

It's interesting that "Betty" is on the list. I'd always thought it was a nickname for Elizabeth, not a standalone name in its own right.

astura 8y ago
It's both a diminutive of Elizabeth and a name in and of itself. Same with Betsy and Liz. Betty can also be a diminutive of Beatrice or Bethia. Betty White is Betty and Betty Ford is Elizabeth. There's no "rules" that you can't name someone a name that was traditionally a diminutive of another name, and it's not even particularly uncommon. Alex is common as both a diminutive of Alexandria, a diminutive of Alexandra, and a name of its own. Zach/Zack/Zac can be a diminutive of Zechariah, Zachary, Isaac, or a name in its own right. Max can be short for Maximilian, Maximus, Maxim (which is a shorter form of Maximus), Maxwell, or it can be just Max.