Home / General / My name is my name

My name is my name

/
/
/
1627 Views

Let’s have some fun with this:

The Social Security Administration has released the 20 most popular baby names of last year, and the results are … less than original.

The results are near-identical to the 2021 rankings, with only one new name making an appearance. “Olivia,” “Emma” and “Charlotte” are still the top three female names, and “Liam,” “Noah” and “Oliver” maintained their positions in the top male names.

There were no new additions to the top 10 male names, though a few of them switched places in the rankings. And the top 10 female names saw only one new entry: Luna, the Latin word for moon.

Latin is a language spoken by approximately zero Americans in 2023, while there’s another language in which “Luna” also means “moon,” currently spoken by 54.1 million people in this country.

At one time or another, we have all suffered through those unappealable debates in which a lady, with copious interjections and anacolutha, swears that the word luna is more (or less) expressive than the word moon. Apart from the sell-evident observation that the monosyllable moon may be more appropriate to represent a very simple object than the disyllabic word luna, nothing can be contributed to such discussions.

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

Naming customs in America have become quite a bit more diverse over the past century, just like the country itself, which is an idea that makes some people mad, hence all the Cartesian dualism fascism going around at the moment.

For example, a century ago the most common boy and girl names (John and Mary) were given to 5% and 6% of male and female children respectively. Last year, only 1.1% of boys and 0.9% girls were given the most popular respective names (Liam and Olivia. Liam means “I’m white” in Celtic interestingly).

Besides the obvious role played by increasing ethnic diversity, I imagine another key factor here is secularization, as biblical names have suffered a massive status degradation over the past 50 years or so.

For example, the apostle to the Gentiles has seen his name, which was between the 12th and 19th most popular boy’s name in every year between 1920 and 1968, slide down the popularity rankings:

1975: 29

1985: 42

1995: 71

2005: 130

2015: 200

2022: 262

I find it interesting that this process is almost perfectly linear: if a name is declining in overall popularity, it becomes slightly less popular every year almost without fail. Thus “Paul” has become less popular — or remained the same — every single year since 1977, to the point now where my once ubiquitous name is becoming almost exotic. Thanks Woke America!

Another thing I find interesting is how sensitive we all are to the class signaling performed by naming. Here are the half dozen girl names ranked between 29 and 34 last year:

Layla

Lily

Aurora

Nova

Ellie

Madison

Pretty easy to do, isn’t it, which is odd given that class isn’t a thing that exists in American society, according to the new history textbooks approved for use in the states of Florida and Texas.

Speaking of which, at present this is a topic of especial interest to me, because I was kicked out of teaching a required first year class at my law school a few months ago by the Dean and Associate Dean as a consequence of discussing it. They said I was being racist and sexist by pointing out that you can tell a lot about peoples’ class and racial and gender identity from their first names, which is something I pointed out to students because I was warning them that this can lead to all sorts of unconscious bias in the functioning of the legal system. (We were reading a case in which this clearly seemed to be a factor).

Anyway I’m sure you too can find all sorts of fascinating in the data, even if you have a less pragmatic reason for being interested in it than I do at the moment.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :