Baby Names and the Movies

A Note from Ken

When I wrote this post in 2010, it was about popular baby names at that time and particularly the effect of the Twilight movie series on baby names. What I didn't expect was how popular the post would be over the years - and that it would create another "Twilight effect."

When a post gets a lot of hits/visits, it moves up in my site's rankings and also in the way search engines rank pages. That attracts visitors and it also attracts spammers. (Hello India!) This post (in its original  2010 form) got more spam comments than any other post. It is not the most popular post here but it is the most popular with spammers who want to leave a comment with links to their sites or services. I took down the post for a few weeks and made some changes to the post and title in 2021but it still had the "twilight spam effect."

It's back and we;ll see what happens this time.

“Anything can influence baby names, from pop culture to literature to music and celebrities,” says Jennifer Moss, author of The One-in-a-Million Baby Name Book and founder of Babynames.com.

Looking back at the top baby names in 2009 shows that Moms and Dads were looking to popular vampire books and the first family for baby names. Fame can be fleeting - Miley (Cyrus) and Jonas (as in the brothers) took a stock market dive at the end of 2009.

            

Isabella was the top baby name for girls, Jacob for boys. Isabella’s climb to the top in 2009 ended Emma’s one-year reign. Jacob is on an 11-year run at the top. The surname of the Twilight movie series vampire Edward Cullen became the fastest-rising baby boy name in 2009.

Barack didn’t crack the top 1,000 for boys in 2010, but a version of President Obama's daughter’s name, Malia, was the fastest riser for girls. Maliyah moved up 342 spots, to No. 296, while Malia came in at No. 192, rising 153 spots.

Updating to now, we find these are the top U.S. names currently as supplied by the Social Security Administration from when parents were getting their baby a SS number so they could create all their official paperwork.

Here are some other sources if you are looking for baby names. 

• The Baby Name Wizard
• The Complete Book of Baby Names
• 100,000 + Baby Names: Fascinating Lists, Naming Trends, Key to Gender-Neutral Names
• Baby Names Made Easy: The Complete Reverse-Dictionary of Baby Names
• Beyond Ava & Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby
• Best Exotic Baby Names: New, Historical, Ancient, Mystical

Street Names Using First Names

I stumbled upon this very cool mashup of data and maps on http://www.weathersealed.com that has aggregated data on street names that are actually people's first names. It seemed like a natural for this blog.

The results are organized alphabetically by gender and pinpoint North American roads that share 2000+ common boy and girl first names.

Click the links below to view a list of names. The places are viewable with Google Maps (use the number link) or, even better, the free Google Earth.

I found a surprising 465 Kenneth streets including a bunch in my home state.

Of course, not every name has a street, and they kicked out some data (like street names that contain "unrelated gobbledygook" such as the “Little” in “Little John Street”). Their data came from the Social Security Administration and street information from the Open Street Map project.

The information is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Go to the BOYS' STREET NAMES

Go to GIRLS' STREET NAMES

Unsexiest Names

If our post yesterday on the sexiest names was at all controversial (everyone wants their name to be on the list, of course), then here is a more controversial topic - the UNsexiest names. This is the list you don't want to be on - created by a poll we conducted on our original site in 1999.

Top 15 vote-getters
as the least sexy names
for the gentlemen:

1. Ivor
2. Basil
3. Cyril
4. Horace
5. Willie
6. Norman
7. Alfred & Albert
8. Rupert
9. Bernard
10. Archibald
11. Sidney
12. Herman
13. Herbert
14. Cecil
15. Percy

and for the ladies...

1. Ethel
2. Alma
3. Florence
4. Mildred
5. Zelda
6. Myrtle
7. Edna
8. Elvira
9. Agnes
10. Bessie
11. Enid
12. Mora
13. Maude
14. Ida
15. Edda

Sexy Names

Tastes change - especially our taste in names. But a survey conducted in England and the United States in the 1990s asked adult men and women to select from a list of names the ones they thought sounded the "sexiest."

On the original version of this site, we surveyed visitors about what names they would add to that list. 

Here are the top vote-getters - in no particular order - from the survey and from our own poll.

Survey Sexiest Female Names	Survey Sexiest Male Names
Christine	Paul
Cheryl	Mark
Melanie	Adam
Dawn	David
Heather	Steven
Jennifer	Clint
Marilyn	Michael
Michelle	James
Susan	Robert
Samantha	Richard
Catherine	Christopher
Amanda	Justin
Kerry	Drew
Claire	Brandon
Natalie	Sean
Gabrielle	Brad
Cerise	Reese
Pamela	Skyler

Poll Top Vote-Getters
Sexy Male Names
Josh, Darryl,Roman, Richard, Dustin, Ryan, Daniel, Tyler, Kevin, Darien, Julio, Eric, Donovan, Kane, Riley, Dylan, Quinn, Foster, Remington, Logan,
Devon, Andre, Clay, Jeremy, Leo, Adam, Alex, Steve, Jamie, Barret, Randy,
Jamal, Gavin, Neal, Ethan, Xavier, Dawson, John, Pierce, Logan

Poll Top Vote-Getters  Sexy Female Names
Julie, Juliet, Sabrina, Victoria/Vicki, Claudia, Caitlin/Kaitlyn, Stephanie/Steffie, Marci/Marcia, Raquel, Daria, Dayna, Lianna, Leigh/Lee, Amy, Aimee, Celeste, Rosemary, Dori, Brandy, Lauren, Laura, Lori, Gabrielle, Tabitha, Angelia/Angela, Robyn, Amanda/Mandy, Ava, Nadia, Jade, Susan/Suze/Suzi, Maricela, Sara, Kathy/Cathy/Catherine/Katie, Tea, Chantal, Amber, Vanessa, Aisha, Scarlett, Tammy, Desiree, Jayne/Jane, Carla/Carly, Rachel/Raychel/Rachelle, Destiny, Diane/Diana/Dia, Buffy, Sloan, Helena, Samantha/Sami/Samira, Callie, Jamie.

What about the UNsexiest names...


The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (FHM)
Esquire's Sexiest Woman Contest
People's Sexiest Man Alive