Baby Names Lose their Luster

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Baby Names Lose their Luster

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

filed under: family

Insensitive people might be calling Britney names, but no one is naming their kid Britney.

What’s in a name? You can never tell for sure when it's the name of a celebrity. Things change. Who knew darling Brit, the little Mouseketeer with the great big voice would fall on such hard times? The name Britney used to be in the top 100 of popular names but now, like her life, it's in a downward spiral.

If you named your daughter Britney don’t despair, the public has lousy memories. Except for a name like Adolph, which thanks to Hitler seems to be permanently tainted, the popularity of names tend to fluctuate. Says BabyNames.com founder and Mom•Logic friend Jennifer Moss, "People in the news have a big influence on naming trends. Consider the name Monica, which was in the top 100 names when the TV show Friends came out. Then it dropped rapidly after the Monica Lewinski scandal."

Although it’s not possible to predict the future, the best guarantee against "name change" might be to stay away from celebrity names altogether –but even that’s not foolproof—who could've guessed Katrina would be the name of one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history?

filed under: family

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When I named my daughter Brittany in 1990 I thought the name was extremely unique and beautiful, and had never heard of it. I soon found out the name was in the top 5 or 10, and there were Brittanys everywhere. Then came Britney Spears, and by 1999 my daughter was being called “britney spears” as a compliment. Now, of course, nobody uses the name because of Britney Spears… I just hope that some other Brittanys modify the image as time goes by.

- M

Posted 02/05/08 02:59 PM

My daughter was born this past june and after much deliberation we settled on naming her Sophia. I have never known anyone named Sophia. I thought it was unique. Then when the list caame out with the top baby names for 2007, Sophia was #1. I couldn’t believe it.

- ashley

Posted 02/06/08 10:24 AM

I thought I read somewhere that Katrina had actually gained popularity since the hurricane..

- kip

Posted 02/08/08 04:06 PM

Read this on usatoday: “Only about 850 baby girls in the United States were named Katrina last year, according to new data released by the Social Security Administration, dropping it more than 100 slots on the popularity list. At a rank of 382nd, it now sits just below Brenna.”

- Fran

Posted 02/09/08 01:01 AM

I have five daughters: Keely, Danielle, Addison, Meredith, and Julia. I never thought any of them were too common, but I know my Addison (now 8) has three “Madison”s in her class, and I have a couple pregnant friends contemplating naming theirs “Julia”. Name trends just change too fast!

- Savanna

Posted 02/18/08 03:18 PM

Hey. I hate all these names.

- cody

Posted 05/08/08 12:28 PM

Gross. Trendy names.

- Anonymous

Posted 02/09/09 12:03 AM