{"id":11327,"date":"2015-05-14T13:18:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T17:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11327"},"modified":"2015-05-15T21:21:27","modified_gmt":"2015-05-16T01:21:27","slug":"name-to-discuss-faye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/05\/14\/name-to-discuss-faye\/","title":{"rendered":"Name to Discuss: Faye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

A name I’ve recently stumbled upon\/remembered is Faye. I think it’s adorable- short and sweet and with a very cute meaning (fairy). But when I think about the name’s style, I can’t really figure it out. I tend to like more traditional names and I’m not sure where Faye works into that. My favorites currently are: Eloise, Georgia, Josephine, Constance, Susannah, and Jane. What sort of naming style do you think Faye falls under? Thanks so much!<\/p>\n

Best,
\nLynn<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oh, interesting. It’s an older name, but it’s not exactly what I think of when I think “vintage revival.” And it’s not what I’d call classic or traditional, but it’s definitely familiar in a pleasant long-term way. It makes me think of Faye Dunaway, so it has a strong measure of 1960s Hollywood Glamour—the pantsuited red-lipsticked type more than the twirly dress type, fedoras more than tiaras. The name Faye has a soft light sound, but not weak or wispy; a Faye could poke a big strong scary guy in the chest and KEEP poking him, talking fast and fierce the whole time, until he backed up nervously.<\/p>\n

I also think of the author Fay Weldon, which gives it a pleasing creative\/writerly\/British feel.<\/p>\n

One possibly negative association I have is with the word fey, which means unnaturally whimsical or strange. But I don’t actually think of it unless I’m sitting here thinking, “Hm, hm, Faye Faye Faye, hm, hm….,” as I did when thinking about it for this post. If I met a woman or little girl named Faye, I don’t think the word fey would come to my mind at all. And I think for most of the population, fey is an unused word at this point: it’s in my reading vocabulary, but it isn’t as if I regularly use it in conversation. And I wonder if Tina Fey will help to balance this.<\/p>\n

Let’s consult the expert on style categories, The Baby Name Wizard<\/a>. She’s got the name Faye in these categories: Brisk and Breezy, Guys and Dolls, and Solid Citizens. Guys and Dolls, definitely: that’s the chest-poking and fedoras. Solid Citizens, maybe—but I think the image of the name may be shifting.<\/p>\n

I’ve noticed the name Mae\/May coming up much more often around here. I’d like to see more Kay\/Kaye, because I think it’s so pretty, but it’s hard for me to get past the way it sounds like an initial. I don’t think Gay is ever coming back, and we’re not quite ready for another round of Jay and Ray, but Faye has a fresh sound all of a sudden. I’d put it with names such as Pearl and June and Rose. Oh! I know what category I might add it to in The Baby Name Wizard: Charms and Graces. It goes beautifully with names such as Ruby, Dahlia, Fern, Hazel, Ivy, Olive, and Violet, and here also are the aforementioned Pearl and June and Rose.<\/p>\n

Looking at it with the names you like, I’d say it’s not quite the same style (except perhaps for Constance), but that it’s a nicely compatible style: sisters named Faye and Eloise make sense to me, as do sisters named Faye and Josephine, or Faye and Georgia.<\/p>\n

I suspect we’ll see it first as a middle name, the way we’re seeing Mae and Pearl. That makes it a lot harder to track, since the Social Security Administration<\/a> doesn’t give us access to that information. We’ll have to go on things such as how often we notice it on a parent’s name list, or how often it’s mentioned as a sibling’s middle name.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the Social Security Administration, let’s see how the name is ranking. I dislike the new charts, which don’t show GAPS. I mean, look at this:<\/p>\n

\"(screen

(screen shot from SSA.gov)<\/p><\/div>\n

If you just glanced at that chart, you’d think Faye was in a long decline. But no: it dropped out of the Top 1000 after 1979 and then, on the very next line, we’ve skipped to the year 2014, the first appearance of Faye in the Top 1000 in 34 years! It WAS in a long decline; now it is BACK. And yet the departure year and arrival year are right next to each other, as if in subsequent years.<\/p>\n

I didn’t include the whole chart because it’s enormous: Faye was in the Top 1000 from 1900 (the first year we can now access for this charting feature) until 1973. It was bouncing around in the high 100s and low 200s, nice and steady, no sudden movements, until 1958 when it hit the 300s and kept going: 400s as of 1962, 500s as of 1965, and so on until it left completely after 1979. (I wonder if Tammy Faye Bakker had anything to do with that, or if it was just its natural time?)<\/p>\n

It’s interesting that it is back, just as we’re noticing it again. This is that phenomenon, I think, where as a society we drift toward certain names and certain sounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! A name I’ve recently stumbled upon\/remembered is Faye. I think it’s adorable- short and sweet and with a very cute meaning (fairy). But when I think about the name’s style, I can’t really figure it out. I tend to like more traditional names and I’m not sure where Faye works into that. My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-to-consider"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2WH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11327"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11340,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions\/11340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}