Many of us will see our families over the holidays – if we haven’t already! And while that brings a mix of the joyful, stressful, and just plain complicated, it’s also an opportunity to think about names. I recently discovered that my Great Aunt Betty wasn’t Betty at all. She was Rose Elizabeth. The Elizabeth […]
READ MORE >>SUNDAY SUMMARY
Sharing all the baby name news from the week!
Every Sunday, the Summary rounds up the most newsworthy name-related stories, along with the occasional blast from the past. We'll examine trends and themes, surprising celebrity choices, and names in the headlines, too.
Sunday Summary: In Praise of Critical Ignoring
I need a cookie recipe. When I was younger, this involved flipping through my mom’s (single) baking-focused cookbook. Today, that same process could easily take hours. Longer! Google, Pinterest, Insta, searching through the archives of sites I love. And then there are more questions: can I get lemon pie filling/Butterfinger bits/almond extract at my usual […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: Dunbar’s Number
A reader asked a fascinating question a while back. Yes, she agreed. Fewer children receive the most popular names. But we know SO many more people. Doesn’t that offset the decline in a name’s absolute popularity? My reply: not really. And that’s because of Dunbar’s Number. To follow her (excellent) argument: maybe back in the […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: Confirmation Names
This is confirmation weekend in my church, and while there are many, many things I appreciate about this right of passage, I’d be lying if I said that names weren’t right up there. If you’re unfamiliar with the tradition, Confirmation – at least for Catholics – is the final sacrament of initiation. In some ways, […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: The Story Matters
I love a good Name Quotes round-up from Nancy. Reading the story about Amandla Sternberg’s name, I found myself thinking: The story matters. And how you TELL it matters, too. Amandla’s name looks like a creative twist on Amanda, but it’s not. It’s borrowed from an anti-apartheid rallying cry and means power. Reading her account, […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: Boston Accents and Adele
Here’s something that we often don’t anticipate, but OH how it matters. ACCENTS. They’re all over the name news this week. First up, Adele surprised everyone when she announced that a fan said her name “perfectly.” It’s less uh DELL and more … uh DALE. Except there’s a little bit of a “w” quality to […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: That Outlier Name
I’m a pretty heavy Ancestry.com user, though more for learning about names in the broadest sense than investigating my personal family tree. Still, I’ve discovered some fascinating tidbits about my family history over the years, often because the site itself notifies me when a new set of records includes information about my ancestors. A recent […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: Steve’s Principle
I legally changed my name as an adult. It’s a long story, but here’s the punchline: some people still don’t use my new name. This includes people I love, and who love me right back. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t do it, not exactly. It was that they couldn’t quite wrap their heads around the […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: Mum’s Age Matters … or Does It?
The most popular names data in England & Wales was recently released. It brings with it one of my favorite data sets of all-time: Most Popular Names by Mother’s Age. No comparable information is published for the United States. And yet, we all sort of know this. Younger parents tend to choose trendier names. More […]
READ MORE >>Sunday Summary: Dogs and Cats and Kids
We love our kids. And we love our pets. For many of us, pets serve as our starter children. Or sometimes, they complete our families. Either way, we often name our pets with the same level of focus we apply to our children. But there’s a big bonus with our dogs, cats, guinea pigs and […]
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