5.11.2009

On Baby Names

In 2005, Freakonomics authors Dubner and Levitt offered their theories on how parents name their kids:
Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber, Heather, and Stephanie started out as high-end names. For every high-end baby given those names, however, another five lower-income girls received those names within 10 years.
Today, Wired offers another collection of theories for "Why Your Baby’s Name Will Sound Like Everyone Else’s":
Now that everyone relentlessly Googles baby names, parents have no excuse if they saddle their kids with the most popular names. But Wattenberg says they still want names that sound popular, so they end up choosing endless variations on phonetic schemes that happen to be popular: Ava, Emma, Ella, Bella.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was offended by this theory when I read Freakanomics...however I may be too close to the issue to be objective.