Babycenter’s analysis of 2006’s baby name trends was released some weeks back. Ain & I used to refer to Babycenter a lot while Irfan was happily gestating in his amniotic sac up to the time he started to walk.
The names are obviously American, but there are some issues that can be brought up by looking at the list. Not so much on the boys name though the rhyming names Aiden, Caden and Braden gives me the heebie-jeebies. No sign of Raiden though.
There seem to be a trend of giving girls a WASP-ish surname as a given name. On the list it self there’s (going down the list) Madison, Hailey (Not really new, thanks to Ms. Mills), Riley, Addison (Parents were Moonlighting fans?), Mackenzie, Taylor, Avery, Morgan, Jordan (Can’t really argue with this, she was fantastic on Millennium), Peyton, Kennedy, Kendall, McKenna and Bailey. Some weird ones like Nevaeh (read it backwards) and Destiny are pretty far out. Maybe these names will be more of a regular thing in the future but now they’re still in the weird names category.
So this trend of naming girls in such a way, as I have expressed elsewhere, I can see it escalating to taking more varied and obscure WASP surnames. I predict that in 2016 we will have such girly names as McGillycutty, Hitchcock, Hornblower, Ramsbottom and my favourite, Hooker.
By 2106, girls will probably mined all the WASP names and they’ll start using east European names and perhaps African names like Zbydniewski, Moczkiewicz, Gerasymenko, Bondarchuk and Nshakashogwe.
Further on in 2206 perhaps we’ll have apostrophes being trendy, so we’ll name our daughters Re’becc’a, Ra’chael, Van’e’ssa and M’a’r””’y. Perhaps we’ll also go with asterisks and ampersands and hash marks. “Good morning E*liz#abe’t’h&. How are you on this fine S**u’nd#a&y?”
Then, in 2506, we’ll have girls named after astronomical bodies like Arcturus, Betelgeuse, Andromeda, Rigel and Deneb. I also predict that the one named “Horsehead Nebula” will have some problems fitting in at school.
Finally in 3006, we’ll have all our children named like Iain M. Banks’ Culture ships. Those will be cool and I wouldn’t have any probelms with kids named Wings on a Prayer Jones, My Life As A Gold-plated Baseball Glove Curtis, Don’t Use The Yellow Door Unless You’re Mr Rogers, Change Toothbrushes Every Fifth Week Taylor and My Three-legged Cat Loves Gravy Cunningham. (Note: These names do not refer to anyone dead, undead or alive.)
After that I suspect we’d live happily ever after.
Well, maybe.
