February 11, 2005

• Evidently I peaked quickly around 1981. Yeah, that sounds about right.
• [nice one]
• [can we spoon now, mct?]
• In the 1960s mine was 15th, down to 17th in the 70s when I was actually born. I was wondering why I never meet many old men with my name. And few young ones either, apparently.
• I had fun.
• [yes, of course]
• [I don't wanna catch teh gey or nothin but]
• That is a fantastic fucking post. However, there "bernockle" is not one of the top thousand names for any decade. We, as monkeys, can collectively change that. I call upon all monkeys to call out the name "bernockle" while engaging in intercourse over the next month.
• Not surprisingly, "Adolph" nosedived in the late 1930's, never to recover...
• A few million were still naming their kids Adolph in the 60's though. Jennifer peaked in the early 70's at well over 20 million, which doesn't surprise me, since I've been practically surrounded by Jennifers all my life.
• My parents decided to name me Sarah, in the 80s, because it was a nice, not too common name. Right at the same time everyone else had that exact same idea. That's actually the only reason they can give me for naming me Sarah. I should send them here to back up the claim I've been making for years about how badly that backfired.
• Only people my age are called Tracy. No surprises there. #2's name is ridiculously common, though. And I'm ashamed that we named our child Ethan, looking at the MASSIVE SPIKE OF DOOM on 2003.
• This was fun. I didn't see the relative rankings (like which name was #15 or 17, to refer upward), but just looking at the trends was nice, especially because all of my coursework is backwards looking this semester, and it's neat to see Wilhelm (Kaiser) trickle off at WWI...
• Wilhelm (Kaiser) My uncle's elder son is named Kieran, but his Chinese name is Kai3 Ze2, which was picked as it sounded like "Kaiser". After all, "Kaiser" is derived from "Ceasar" (IIRC), so hopefully my little toddler cousin will get ahead in life. (^_-)
• Someone, please explain to me that the 335th most common boys' name in the 1930s was Mary. Short for Marion, perhaps? Anybody got a Grandpa Mary?
• why oh why are people naming girls Andrew?
• Huh. That's odd. "Glenn" has been more popular than "Glen" every decade, yet people almost always spell my name with one 'n' instead of two. Good post, by the way. I think my favorite part is how the pretty colors ebb and flow.
• Koko: you're misinterpreting the graph-- it's "per million" not "in millions". So there were only a few thousand adolphs in the 1960s and half a million jennifers in the 70s
• Hey! I was on the leading edge of the name game. Now everybody and her daughter is named Andrea. Was the first child and named after my dad. When the next brat came along, HE got the real name: Andrew--which he dumped quite soon after birth and has never used. (so there, Dad) I used to ask (those rare) people my age why they were named Andrea. Several were named for the wreck of the Andrea Doria, one was named Andrea del Sarto, the artist, and one after Palladio. Now they just like the sound of it. But I had it first, so nananana.
• My brother's name, Ryder, was barely charting when my parents picked it...now there are 666 Ryders (spooooooooky!) per million. He was named for Albert Pinkham Ryder, Dad's favorite American impressionist. (really dodged a bullet on being named "Pinkham", I guess)
• My daughter's name, "Thea," seems to be suitably unusual. My son's name, "William," has NEVER been out of the top 20. Hmm...
• Yyyyep, I'm right in the middle of the "Sarah" curve. Thanks, Mom and the soap opera she was watching in the hospital, probably while on painkillers. (If you put in "Sara," it'll trace both. No wonder nobody can *$#$ing spell my name.) The narrowing-down animation (I are really um, descriptive) is fascinating to me. Oooh. Look at it go.
• The name Jesus is making a strong comeback these last few years.
• My brother's boy is named after a character in an Argentine sci-fi film titled "Man Facing Southeast". The main character of "Rantes". Sweet kid, stupid ass name.
• It's fun to match names with the popular culture that spawned them. 'Ricky' peaks around the time "I love Lucy" had little Ricky Ricardo. 'Bailey' and 'Jennifer' roughly match with WKRP, and 'Xander' and 'Willow' come out of nowhere once "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" debuts. (The name 'Buffy' had already peaked in the 1970's with TV's "A Family Affair") I'm not up on soap operas, but I'll bet there's some evidence of influence there, too.
• I think I remember reading somewhere that Ashley was almost never applied to girls until a soap opera came along with a female character named Ashley.
• Ah yes, mct, that would be The Young and the Restless. Lunchtimes during my second year of high school. I was apparently named for a soap opera too - my middle name is *shudder* Jolanda, with the 'J' pronounced as J, not Y. Tracy was straight from a magazine my mother was reading. There, my dirty secret is revealed!
• I loves my middle name. Old family name, Wray. After my Granddad.
• ...mad Googling brings up Guiding Light as the likely inspiration for my name. yes... well. My middle name is neat and family-heirloomish, so that's all right.
• I googled my name to try and find origins, but all I found was that there's a woman called Jolanda in the latest Survivor.
• "Ryan" peaked around 1980, 5 years after I was born. I was Ryan back BEFORE it was trendy! Damn post-'80-Ryan-boom posers! I remember back in 1978 you couldnt even walk down the street being named Ryan- society wasnt ready, man! Jocks would be like "whats that, BRyan without a B?" and they'd kick your ass. Now every suburban poser can goto the mall and buy a "Ryan" novelty plate!
• >b>MonkeyFilter: There, my dirty secret is revealed! Trac: that's what it's all about, hunh?
• arrragh! my cingers were frossed I guess
• The simultaneously massive climb circa 1980 and subsequent precipitous collapse in popularity of the following names is rather amusing. Brandy. Tiffany. Amber.
• What about the same names, only ending in "i"?
• Alnedra- No, in Chinese you're supposed to give them a name that doesn't sound auspicious, because otherwise demons will become jealous of the child and torment them. You never want to name the kid Lucky, because it's like telling actors to have a good show...
• My daughter's name, "Thea," seems to be suitably unusual. I thought so too until a girl with the same name was in one of my classes in grade school. That was weird. It was like having two people named "Shaka Kahn" and you're wondering who's the imposter.
• I was at my most popular in the 1940s. Always knew I was born in the wrong time.
• My dad's dad didn't speak to my mom for a long time becuase she didn't name me Jennifer. My name got the most popular (but still not very popular) in the 70s. My mom has no idea why she picked it out, but she lies and alternately tells people she named me after (football player) Don Meredith or (Broadway actor) Meredith McRae. mct: That's a cool spelling! My middle name is Rae. (Hence the Meredith McRae theory.) My poor sister (born 14 years after me) got saddled with Amanda right at the early 90s Amanda boom. My mom thought she was giving her a more unusual middle name with Austin, but no. Poor kid.
• js - Alnedra is Chinese.
• No, in Chinese you're supposed to give them a name that doesn't sound auspicious, because otherwise demons will become jealous of the child and torment them. Oops, js, sorry, didn't notice this. That's not the case anymore. In the past, Chinese people had several names. One was a "milk name", given to infants when they are born. That name would be based on one's position in the family (No. 1, No. 2 etc...), some funny quality or event that occured, or an animal (for many farming families). So children might be called "Dog" or "Bull" or "Horse" - and names can be changed for the worse if the child is not doing well. Never say that an infant is heavy or fat - these are good things, but may draw bad luck. If other people praise your child, be quick to negate the praise by saying it's not so, or drawing attention to the child's flaws. But as a child grows, they will acquire other names. A personal name may be used amongst family and close friends; a pen name for writing, calligraphy and art; and a public name. Some of these names may be auspicious. Many personal names have one word that is common for that generation (picked out by the village elders, usually from lines of poetry, so that 6 to 10 generations' worth of names can be generated), and the other word unique to the person. For instance, my Chinese name is Shu2 Yan4. The latter word is "Swallow (the bird)". The former word is "Chaste". My father's name is even more auspicious: Yi4 Fa1. The former word is his generational name, which can't be translated well, but corresponds to "loyalty", "comaraderie" and "integrity". Big word. The latter word can mean "hair" or more commonly "to strike a fortune". Really. So names can be auspicious nowadays, since we hardly have the different name system anymore.
• Small correction: The Fa1 in my dad's name can have the dual meaning only if written in Simplified Chinese. In Traditional Chinese characters, the two meanings are written differently. My father's name in Traditional has the "strike a fortune" meaning. Actually, I exaggerate. The word can be used in conjuction with many others to mean quite a lot: "happen", "invent", "depart" etc... but often on its own it would usually imply "to strike it rich". /blather
• Oh, come on, your dad's name means "big hair". Get over it.
• Hmm. The common misspelling of my first name is less popular than the correct, hardly-every-correctly-spelled version. Get with it, people! Of course, it peaked in the 50's...
• Get in on the ground floor folks, I'm telling you, Abiezer is the millenarial name for the new millenium! My Chinese name was given to me by my Professor - it took me about three years to learn to pronounce it properly. It's based on the sound of my English surname, so if you ever make it to Beijing ask for me as 魏友敦. Wei was an old Warring States kingdom, and Youdun could be rendered 'sincere friend'. Since that's patently ridiculous most Chinese friends go for a version of 'Jim' that ends up sounding like the Chinese for 'wooden chicken' or worse. Alnedra - do you know anything about 拆字 chaizi (glyphomancy I think it is in English)?. A friend tried to explain the basics once but it was all a bit obscure. In their village they'd get the local Daoist to do this as part of the process of picking a new name to change their fortunes.
• Abiezer, I'm afraid I don't know the nitty-gritty, but what I recall is this. Every word may have certain radicals, such as mu4 (wood), shui3 (water), ri4 (sun) and so on. These may help define certain qualities of the words, especially in terms of the elements. For instance, a friend of mine had a middle name character that had the radical yu3(rain) at the top. This was found to be too "watery" for her, and was changed to a word with the yu4 (jade) radical instead. Also, each word can be counted for the number of strokes needed to write it (a littlelike english name numerology method). The numbers indicate which element (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire or Earth) the words are in, and how that complements the person's ba1 zi4 (Eight Characters, four pairs of characters that denote the hour, day, month and year of birth). E.g., of my Eight Characters, four are Fire (which is unusually high and awfully unbalanced). My name helps to balance things a bit because my middle name Shu2 (chaste), is written with the "water" radical on the side. That's just about as much as I know about it.
• How can I go about getting a Chinese name?
• Thanks Alnedra - now you mention it I'v heard other people say their hames are unbalanced etc. Didn't realise it was the same thing. bernockle - for non-natives like us it's basically about finding the most literary and knowledgeable Chinese friend you have and getting them to pick one that's appropriate to you and doesn't mean anything too unfortunate. There's also only a set number of characters used as surnames for Han people (traditionally 100 but actually a few more). It's very handy to have a recognisably proper Chinese surname when e.g. you're using a paging service or reserving a hotel room. There are also attempts to phonetically transcribe foreign names - in the paper I just finished translating I found out that Rousseau is known as 'Lu Suo' here. George W bush is 'Xiao Bu Shi' - 'Bush junior'.
• bernockle: try this for a quick and not-quite-complete guide to the meanings and pronunciations of the hundred surnames. The personal name can be much more flexibly picked. It can be any two words (one is also acceptable and increasingly common in China) in the Chinese vocabulary. Certain words have even been created only for names, and are not used in any other context. Abiezer: There's one more quality of characters, and that is their components (more than just radicals). The characters can be taken apart (chai1 zi4 literally) and the individual parts examined. One example that stuck to my mind was from a comic book: the word Tan2 (a kind of flower that blooms only once a year and then only for a few hours in the night, withering before dawn). The sage who was doing the fortunetelling took apart the word and told his client that he would meet within the day (Ri4) a man with the word "Cloud" (Yun2) in his name. Oversimplistic, but it's in the right direction.
• From Alnedra's link 'Recent surveys have identified over ten thousand surnames' - so I was bang on the money with that 'actually a few more than 100' then!? One colleague picked the Chinese name Wang Ming on account of the two characters being very common and easy to write and remember. What he didn't know is it's unfortunately also the name of a notorious 'traitor' to the Party who ended up taking refuge in the Soviet Union due to falling out with the CCP, so he always got odd reactions from the politicos he interviewed. Single character personal names are all the rage with the trendy youth here, and lots of girls seem to go for cutesy doubling of characters, e.g. 'Ting-ting' 'Mei-mei'. This can also be a form of endearment, and my female colleagues used to chucklingly refer to me as 'Dun-dun', which as they were quick to point out can also sound like 'taking a squat to have a dump'! What could they be trying to say? I like the Taiwanese/Southern fashion of prefixing your name with 'Ah-' as a term of endearment. I've heard it done in English too - 'Hey, Ah-Jim...' I've seen riddles based on a similar breakdown of character elements too Alnedra. I always enjoy them when they're explained to me but since I started writing Chinese on computer I can never remember waht a character is written like until I see it any more, so I rarely guess them right
• Zhongwen.com has a list of characters for English names - under vocubulary heading. The one for my name (Julie) is just about exactly as I would say it, even the tones.