| ▲ | billyp-rva 2 hours ago |
| > Of the 42 names that moved toward girls, 34 were driven mainly by an increase among girls, rather than a decline among boys. > Surprisingly, the same pattern held in the opposite direction. Of the 12 names that moved toward boys, 9 shifted mainly because fewer girls were receiving them, rather than because more boys were. In other words, whichever way a name moved, the biggest change usually came from girls. This is consistent with the observation that girl's names are more dynamic. |
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| ▲ | conductr an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| I have no data but feel that boys tend to get the family names and biblical names (in US anyways). It's rare to hear of a girl named Elizabeth III or Mary Junior but quite common for those concepts in boys. So I think the boy names are heavily weighted on probably the most popular ~25 or so names. Since girl names are more free to follow whatever is fashionable at the time, trends move faster. My son is named after his grandfather, and it's an overly common name in English (American and British). Definitely a top 3 most common for last several centuries |
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| ▲ | mbowcut2 a few seconds ago | parent | next [-] | | I thought girls didn't use junior, III, etc. because traditionally girls adopt their husband's last name, so they would no longer have the same full name as their mother. | |
| ▲ | macintux an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I have no data but feel that boys tend to get the family names and biblical names (in US anyways). Curiously, in the last few months in the U.S. I've met a Tamar and an Esther, both women given family names that were drawn from the bible. | |
| ▲ | vforgione an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Anecdata: I’m a guy and a III. My son almost was a IV but we chose another first name and used my (and my dad’s and my grandfather’s) name for his middle name. My great grandfather had a different name, but I think his dad and maybe grandfather had the same name as me. | | |
| ▲ | georgeburdell an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Not to offend, but I think it has declined because this naming of Jr, III, and so on has come to be associated with poor or rural people. For what it’s worth, I have a relative who is a IV | | |
| ▲ | cogogo 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Never heard that framing before. In New England the practice is associated with blue-blood wealth. | | |
| ▲ | rf15 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | coming from europe: in my experience "fancy names" are either blue blood wealth OR regular people wanting to look like blue blood wealth. So I feel you both have a point here. | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | This appears not to have been rigorously studied. Anecdotally, the further west one goes in America the higher the likelihood a suffix indicates low SES. | | |
| ▲ | conductr 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Well it’s likely the adoption by the Latinx. I think that demo grows as you move west. In Texas it’s become more common in that demo and the redneck whites. The monied still have it but more commonly go towards super preppy names like Tripp, Shep, Archer, Preston. A common theme I see if you dig deeper is they name one of the boys the mom’s maiden surname. But in general, surnames as first names is very common in this demo. I mostly exist in this demo of WASPs and my wife has I think 4+ cousins named in the mom maiden name format, I didn’t realize it was a bigger thing until we had kids and learned a lot of them also did this. My family wasn’t monied so I wasn’t really exposed to it until adulthood. |
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| ▲ | conductr an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’d agree the trend is waning if that’s what you’re getting at but I think it is baked into the history of this dataset and is also still significantly more common for boys than girls Also, IV is really quite rare for boys too. Junior still super common. | | |
| ▲ | rightnutwingjob 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Why would anyone make their kids legal name include “Junior”. How does that work when they’re 60 with grandkids? | | |
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| ▲ | zamadatix 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It seems there are lots of cases across the board where "women adopt traditionally male thing" has become the norm in this timeframe but not many where "men adopt traditionally female thing" at quite the same rate or scale. |
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| ▲ | wredcoll an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think there's something to this, but also you've got to think about the cultural standards where "female" is considered "abnormal". e.g. you have "toys" and "girl toys". "clothes" and "girl clothes" and such. It's not everywhere or everything but there is a trend. | | |
| ▲ | smelendez an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, a woman wearing pants to an office job became totally normal. A man wearing a dress or skirt would be assumed to be transitioning gender or wearing a costume. | | | |
| ▲ | rightnutwingjob 23 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > also you've got to think about We really don’t. And shouldn’t. |
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| ▲ | boringg an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | That is the pattern. Rarely would you have a baby boy using a women's name. Broadly speaking there is a general stigma within society going the other direction then women adopting male things. | | |
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| ▲ | jmaw an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > This is consistent with the observation that girl's names are more dynamic. Interesting, I wonder what causes this? In the US, is more common to name the first son after the father. Given this data comes from US social security information, that definitely has an impact. |
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| ▲ | rightnutwingjob 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > the same pattern held in the opposite direction. That seems like a really awkward way to describe the observation. Wouldn’t the “same” pattern be if the increase was due to greater uptake in the opposite sex. |
