{"id":16218,"date":"2023-03-15T20:47:11","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T00:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=16218"},"modified":"2023-03-21T18:25:09","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T22:25:09","slug":"baby-names-in-pop-culture-love-or-loathe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2023\/03\/15\/baby-names-in-pop-culture-love-or-loathe\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Names in Pop Culture, Love or Loathe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I was wondering if we could have a discussion about names from pop culture that we love or loathe?<\/p>\n

Mine \u201cloathe\u201d is Harper, from the show The White Lotus. No opinion on the name itself, but the character Harper is ~ 40 years old. The name doesn\u2019t appear on the Social Security database until 2004. I\u2019m annoyed that the writers took a top 10 name that\u2019s in the zeitgeist and slapped on a character that is old enough to have a *newborn* Harper.<\/p>\n

My \u201clove\u201d comes from the Upside Down Magic books that I\u2019m currently listening to with my daughter. Names such as Anemone and Fuchsia are particular pleasing when they hit my ear.<\/p>\n

I would love to hear the list from you and others!<\/p>\n

Marissa<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I wanted to try to think of more examples from my own experience before posting this, but I can’t wait, I NEED to hear other people’s answers. I will add more of my own if I think of more. I KNOW I had something that was similar to the Anemone\/Fuchsia example, but I cannot think of it.<\/p>\n

I had a strongly negative reaction to a book I tried reading quite a long time ago—20 years? more? it all runs together at this point. But there was a grown woman, like FORTY OR FIFTY YEARS OLD grown woman, named Madison. And it was written in present-day-at-that-time. So it was impossible: you can tell what year the movie Splash<\/a> came out by searching the Social Security Administration Beyond the Top 1000 data base<\/a> for the name Madison: the movie and the name for girls both happened in 1984. The author probably thought of it as a pleasingly businesslike name with a pleasingly presidential association. But it didn’t work in the early 2000s (or whatever it was) on a woman in her 40s. (It couldn’t even work NOW on a woman in her 40s, but we’re getting there.)<\/p>\n

I work in a library and have seen so many plot synopses on book covers where I thought “Yes, those are clearly names from your baby-name lists.” Can I think of any actual examples at the exact moment such examples would be both relevant and interesting? No I cannot.<\/p>\n

For awhile I felt as if EVERY FEMALE PROTAGONIST IN A NOVEL was named Kate. Just, ALL of them.<\/p>\n

I encountered the names Penelope and Genevieve in books, and thought “OH!!!” and added them to my own list. It was just as those names were coming into style, but I hadn’t realized it yet.<\/p>\n

I am pretty sure I first fell in love with the names Cordelia and Winifred while watching the TV show Angel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And of course I, like everyone else my age, fell for the “long feminine names with short boyish nicknames” trend after watching shows such as Who’s the Boss?<\/a> and Sisters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Edited to add:] Back to say that I have just started reading a book that features the friendship of two women born in 1973 and named…Rose and Charlotte. Those names are not at all impossible for 1973: there were over a thousand of each born that year. And if they were sisters, I would assume their parents had old-fashioned tastes, and\/or that they used family names. But, for comparison, there were 62,447 Jennifers born that year, and over 26,900 each of Amys and Michelles. The odds of a 1973 Rose and a 1973 Charlotte meeting as adults, becoming friends, bonding over all their many shared experiences, and NOT bonding over how weird it is that they were both given terrible old-lady names they hated as children and now are amazed to hear on babies EVERYWHERE are too tiny to allow for the suspension of disblief. I’m only partway through the book, though; perhaps they will do this soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, I was wondering if we could have a discussion about names from pop culture that we love or loathe? Mine \u201cloathe\u201d is Harper, from the show The White Lotus. No opinion on the name itself, but the character Harper is ~ 40 years old. The name doesn\u2019t appear on the Social Security database […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4dA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16218","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=16218"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16236,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16218\/revisions\/16236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}