Jenny writes:<\/p>\n
Could you maybe sometime do a poll about the name Dexter? Is it completely ruined by that show? It would be pretty awful for your kid’s name to make people think of a serial killer. I’m curious as to how main stream is that show. Has everyone heard of it? Do you think even in 10 years, it will still matter?<\/p>\n
It’s SUCH a great name. Love the X and the classic feel and the nickname Dex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh, good question! The name Dexter has come up a few times on name lists here, and it seems like most times it’s accompanied by “but—the show” reasons why it can’t be used. Let’s see how prevalent that opinion actually is, with a poll over to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.] I think we can get an idea of how much it’s seeped into the culture by finding out how many people who HAVEN’T seen the show have nevertheless heard of the character Dexter.<\/p>\n
Whether it’ll still have that association in a decade is a trickier thing to determine with the poll, but it’ll be fun for the comments section. If someone mentions the names Lorelei\/Lorelai or Rory, a lot of us think of Gilmore Girls; but if someone mentions the names Luke or Emily or Logan, it doesn’t necessarily come to mind. It’s the difference between unusual names and ones that are so common their associations have been thoroughly diluted. It’s also the difference between names that come to our attention because of a show, versus names that were already familiar and in regular use. Dexter may fail in this category: it wasn’t common before the show, so few of us have ever known any Dexter except the one on the show, which makes the association strong.<\/p>\n
Poll results<\/span> (529 votes total):<\/p>\n
Have watched show; name ruined by it – 69 votes (13%)
Have watched show; name NOT ruined by it – 131 votes (25%)
Have NOT watched show; name ruined by it – 120 votes (23%)
Have NOT watched show; name NOT ruined by it – 209 votes (40%)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jenny writes: Could you maybe sometime do a poll about the name Dexter? Is it completely ruined by that show? It would be pretty awful for your kid’s name to make people think of a serial killer. I’m curious as to how main stream is that show. Has everyone heard of it? Do you think […]<\/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-5889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1wZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889","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=5889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}