What American names reveal about American and British society

a Squall toddlers can be put into your arms. When you admire this little person, you begin to wonder what the future has. Is she shy or will she send it? Are you studying or lazy? Is she an artistic streak or does she have something rebellious? Contemplating these questions, the doctor asks another, more urgent, one: what do you call a baby?

When photographed individually, each name selection is shaped by the constellations of factors, including family history and baby attitudes. (Judging from the online forum, new parents are deeply concerned about whether their babies will suit their moniker.) But together, taking the name reveals a wide range of social trends. Unlike last names, names are subject to fashion and linguistic changes of the time. They are manifestations of popular culture. So the name deserves research.

The Economists have analyzed the first names of roughly 400 million people born in the United States and the United Kingdom over the past 143 years. We saw the popularity and its meaning. We considered how diverse the names were and how quickly the trends went. The results are impressive. Our study revealed that countries on both sides of the Atlantic are more interested in money and power as their cultures become more fragmented and dynamic (see chart below).

American baby names with related meanings, %

American baby names with related meanings, %

american baby names

Related meanings, %

Historically, studying what names evoke has been difficult to quantify, but artificial intelligence offers a way to do so. “What words will last…” is a problem created to solve by large-scale language models (LLM). These models are trained on a vast corpus of texts, allowing us to reveal clusters of relevance. So we registered LLM to provide the top five meanings of all popular names. Our prompts (over 30,000 of which) produced 7,439 unique descriptors, including “purity”, “warrior”, and “socially troublesome”. (Ironically, the most popular description was “unique,” tied to 12,124 different names.)

As for traits, our study found that parents were increasingly concerned about their appearance. (Amazingly, the brain is not very fashionable for children. Names related to smartness have fallen by 6 percentage points since 2000, such as Raynard.) Beauty related names have become more popular in recent decades. Almost 30% of the names in England and Wales have that meaning. More than 30% of American names have also risen 3.2 percentage points since 2000.

Parents are particularly interested in highlighting this trait for their daughters. All the top 10 girls names, including the top 3 (Olivia, Emma, ​​Charlotte of America, Olivia, Amelia and Isla of the United Kingdom), tie “elegance” or variations of it. Of the top 100 boy names in America, only one Beau carries the Association of Handsomeness.

If beauty is desired for a girl, Brown is muscular to the male name. 70% of American boys and 55% of British boys have names that evoke power. (The names of America’s most popular boys are related to strength.) Another category that has become prominent since 2000 is gaining wealth as they ignore King Solomon’s advice to buy brands that evoke prosperity, such as Aston and Audi.

Nearly a third of Americans and nearly 40% of British people do not publicly declare their religious affiliation, but names from the Bible endure. In some cases, this is probably because people don’t recognize the origin of the name in question. Still, names with religious links remain popular. About 15% of America have them. For the boys, Elijah, Jacob and James are one of the chosen ones. For the girls, Abigail, Hannah and Sarah are respected. In the UK, such names look upwards. In 2023, Muhammad was the most popular name for boys in England and Welsh, given to over 4,600 infants, or 1.7% of boys.

Naturally, in both countries, name trends are shaped by immigration. In the United States, the name pool was reduced after the Immigration Act of 1924. It expanded in 1965 when restrictions were relaxed. At that time there were 10,841 names in the United States. By 2023, last year in the dataset, despite fewer children, over five were given 28,945 unique things compared to 22,680 in 1990.

However, data on historical names probably only tells a partial story. In the past, immigrants who come to the US and the UK have felt pressured to adapt or abandon names that sound too foreign. The range of names became wider as both countries became more ethnically diverse and tolerant. Today, many parents view it as a statement of belonging rather than an obstacle to integration, and proudly choose names that hold cultural identity. American names linked to Spanish such as Jose and Diego are surged in popularity, similar to Asa and Sami, linked to British Arabic.

Annual changes in baby names

Distance of Jensen Shannon Names*

↑The name has a high turnover rate

*0 = All names are the same as the previous year, 1 = All names are different from the previous year

Annual changes in baby names

Distance of Jensen Shannon Names*

↑The name has a high turnover rate

*0 = All names are the same as the previous year, 1 = All names are different from the previous year

Annual changes in baby names

Distance of Jensen Shannon Names*

↑The name has a high turnover rate

*0 = All names are the same as last year.

1 = All names are different from the previous year

Other factors contribute to the range of names enjoyed by children today. In 1948, nearly a third of American children received one of the 20 most popular names. Today, parents may prefer to choose something more individualistic than traditional. The “dictionary name” trends – words from dictionaries such as Crimson and Summer – have deepened the pool to use the last name as their first name (for example, Archer).

What did you call me?

But the internet probably also contributes to the split in popularity. As we studied which names were chosen each year, we found that trendy names come and go much faster than they were half a century ago. The jumps and dives of popular names are also spread evenly.

This may be because the Internet provides parents with more information and sources of inspiration than ever before. Jennifer Moss, founder and boss of the website BabyNames.com, says that near-real-time popular data is canceling names faster as parents see names like they compete for the charts and avoid them, rather than risking parents sharing classrooms with five Olivias or eight Noahs. Parents also use Internet genealogy services to reveal names that are rarely used. For example, discovering an ambiguous Scottish great grandmother can encourage parents to revive her name and last name for their child’s name.

In America, there is no name that matches the 1947 Linda boom. We set out for Jack Lawrence’s song of that name and popular actress Linda Darnell. The name has increased by around 100,000 girls, or 5.6%, from 3.4% the previous year. Linda Spike is notable for another reason. In percentage terms, there is no name as popular as Linda.

However, parents may realize that their choices are not just as important as the names awarded by future friends and detractors. “Good names wear out. Bad names may be turned,” wrote Swiss philosopher Johann George Zimmerman. But “the nickname lasts forever.”■

This article was featured in the Culture section of the print edition under the heading “The Importance of Being Ernest.”

Source: Social Security Bureau. National Bureau of Statistics; Economist