'Sometimes you're not making a good decision': why we are fascinated by baby names? Register for free to continue reading

Last Monday, as he does every Monday, SJ Strum sat in his living room in Surrey and recorded a YouTube video about baby names. "Today is a quick name list and reveal of the UK's number one guilty pleasure baby name, which is a name everyone loves, but not everyone is brave enough to wear," he says, before listing more than 350 names in less than 12 minutes. These names, which Strum had garnered through his 17,700 Instagram followers, included Goldie ("vintage vibes"), Tarquin ("pretty high class") and Tallulah ("sounds cool in theory, but when you actually say it in the playground, you feel like maybe it's too much.”) The most popular “guilty pleasure name,” Strum announced, was Tigerlily.

Strum is a maternity blogger and baby name consultant in her 30s. When she first launched her YouTube channel nearly six years ago, she covered a variety of scattered topics, from the myth of 'having it all' to the sadness she felt after giving up breastfeeding. But when she made a video titled "Unique and Unusual Baby Names Inspired by Nature" in September 2016, she realized she had hit upon a theme that resonated.

"People were like, I loved that list, make another one!" she recounts. She followed up with videos on the "hottest baby name trends," "hipster baby names," and "baby names I love…but won't wear." The views increased, and before long, Strum was receiving messages from strangers who wanted help naming their unborn children. “People would contact me saying things like, 'I'm having my first daughter and I like the names Juniper and Lola, what should I call her?' I realized how much appetite there was for these conversations."

Today, Strum has around 115,000 subscribers on YouTube, where most of his videos focus on baby names. She also hosts a podcast, Baby Name Envy, where she suggests names for listeners who can't decide what to name their child, and runs a popular Instagram page with the same title. She says she spends 45 minutes to an hour researching name suggestions for each prospective father featured on the podcast, a service she provides for free. “I earn money through brand endorsements,” he says. "I probably make the same as when I was working in advertising in London full time."

Strum is something of a UK baby naming internet celebrity. But if you share his fascination with first names, your feeds aren't the only place to hang out. In addition to hugely successful websites like Nameberry, BehindTheName, and BabyNameWizard, there are dozens of English-language Facebook groups and Reddit forums, with a combined membership of more than 500,000. In this corner of the web, the Office for National Statistics' annual table of the most popular names in England and Wales is eagerly awaited. Several recent threads on the Mumsnet Baby Name Forum were devoted to detailed predictions of which names would rise and fall, just as cricket fans might debate the outcome of the men's T20 World Cup.

"Bobby [will move up] from 68 [place] and Robert from 115," predicted one Mumsnet user. "Oakley will drop out of the top 100 (at 98 in 2019 data) ... Harper will drop from 29th [and] Willow will rise slightly from 19th."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of Strum's audience are women in their 20s and 30s, presumed to be pregnant or planning a child relatively soon. But it is not the case that only people expecting the arrival of a new baby are interested in naming trends. "Given names can be a source of fascination even if you're not planning to have children, because they're so rich and deep in terms of identity issues," proposes Dr Jane Pilcher, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham, who happily describes herself as a "name nerd."

“I totally understand why people get excited when new name data comes out; Me too," Pilcher says. "We all have a name: it was given to us before we were sentient beings. Then, overlay all the other ways our given name identifies us: it may not simply indicate our gender, but potentially our age, social class, and ethnicity. too. There's a lot to think about."

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It's true that naming trends have always revealed a lot about the naming societies, which helps explain why we had to endure several dog-whistling newspaper articles in the 2010s about whether Muhammed it was actually the most common boy's name in England and Wales (it wasn't). English Puritans between the 16th and 19th centuries and often favoring harsh names that referenced moral virtues, sin, and suffering (think abstinence, Humiliation, and Kill-sin). In traditional Igbo culture, given names have both literal and symbolic meaning, but according to a 2018 study, recent decades have seen a shift towards Igbo parents in Nigeria giving their children shorter, more Westernized names. Common names have become less and less popular in the United States since the 1950s, something researchers attribute to an increasingly individualistic society. It seems likely that public interest in names has increased as the range of names given to children has expanded.

“Throughout the 20th century we began to see an enormous amount of creativity in naming in the US and UK, with popular names making the rounds much faster,” says Dr. Laurel MacKenzie, an adjunct professor of linguistics at New York University. "People no longer choose the same names over and over again, which keeps things interesting."

Celebrities clearly inspire parents to be more creative when naming their children: 'Luna' rose to the top 100 girls' names in England and Wales after Chrissy Teigen and John Legend chose their daughter's name in 2016 (in the 2020 rankings, it jumped again, to become the 36th most popular girl's name), while there was a 367 percent increase in baby boys named Bodhi in the three years after it was named. Megan Fox gave the name to her second child. But seriously famous baby names (think Chicago, Apple, and Atom) have yet to be embraced by the masses. “Celebrities get away with [giving their children unusual names] because they are in an elevated position in society,” Pilcher opines. "That privilege can protect them, and their children, from ostracism or judgment that ordinary people might face for choosing their name."

Oh yeah: the J word. For many people, interest in baby names is driven, at least slightly, even if they don't admit it, by a desire to judge other people's choices. This can manifest itself in harmful ways: Studies show that names deemed easier to pronounce are viewed more positively and correlated with higher positions at law firms, while job applicants with stereotypically black or "foreign" names They may be vulnerable to discrimination during recruitment processes. But there are also less pernicious ways to indulge in name judgment. Ash Bond, a 24-year-old father-of-one from Rotherham, is the co-moderator of two Facebook groups for "name nerds", with more than 18,000 members between them.

Members of these groups are welcome to "roast" - that is, gleefully make fun of - other people's favorite names (recent targets of mild-mannered criticism included Huckson and Parker for boys, and Heavenleigh and Chaisley for girls). girls). Many members of these groups aren't looking to name their children: some are simply interested in etymology or deciding what to name a character in The Sims. Bond, who is trans, consulted the groups when selecting his male middle name. “Sometimes you're not making a good choice with a name, and that's okay,” he says. "We're there to let you know when you're making a bad decision and suggest some better alternatives."

As long as trends keep fluctuating, name nerds will always have something new to talk about. "Names tell us something about the spirit of our time, and different communities have to unconsciously develop their ideas about good naming practices," says Professor Rajend Mesthrie, a linguist at the University of Cape Town who has studied the changes. in personal names among South African Indians. "There is a lot of humanity behind our choices."