If there is ONE THING I would like to shout from the mountaintops in re the Social Security’s baby name information, it is that THE TOP 100 IS NOT (necessarily) THE KISS OF DEATH.<\/p>\n
Some people, when they say “not in the Top 100” DO know what they mean by that, and they really do want to stay out of that level of use. But MOST people DON’T know what they mean by it: they think anything in the Top 100 is “5 of them in a classroom” common. When in fact, these are all names on the 2000 Top 100 list:<\/p>\n
Isaiah
Luis
Richard
Angel
Dakota
Trevor
Blake
Dalton
Sebastian
Robert<\/p>\n
Destiny
Trinity
Mariah
Cheyenne
Michelle
Danielle
Vanessa
Jennifer<\/p>\n
I chose names I’ve never heard on a real child, but of course your experience with the list will vary based on the particular children you’ve come in contact with in schools and daycares and playgroups and in your family\/friends group. My point is not that any one name on the list is SO UNUSUAL, but rather that the Top 100 is not like “the name Jennifer in 1975”: even the most common names are not all that common. (Even the name Jennifer—which was practically an epidemic—didn’t often result in the “five in her class” problem so often cited as a reason to avoid Top 100 names.)<\/p>\n
Some of the names may SOUND common: for example, you might be saying, “Wait—she doesn’t know anyone named Jennifer???” No, no, I mean I don’t know any CHILDREN named Jennifer. Jennifer is a Mommy Name right now, not a child’s name. And so it goes on the list: I’ve never run into a child named Jennifer since I’ve been not-a-child—even though the name hasn’t left the Top 100.<\/p>\n
Notice, by the way, that I used the 2000 list for those names, not the 2007: the 2007 babies are so new, I probably haven’t run into many of them. The 2000 babies, though, are in grade school now, so they’re in the public consciousness.<\/p>\n
Okay, it is TOO IMPOSSIBLE to keep typing about this: Elizabeth has moved from “coloring nearby” to “on my lap talking about things and messing with the keyboard.” So that’s enough for now, but WE WILL RETURN.<\/p>\n
Subject for discussion right now: “The Top 100 is not (necessarily) the kiss of death.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If there is ONE THING I would like to shout from the mountaintops in re the Social Security’s baby name information, it is that THE TOP 100 IS NOT (necessarily) THE KISS OF DEATH. Some people, when they say “not in the Top 100” DO know what they mean by that, and they really do […]<\/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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reference"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1SS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7246","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=7246"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7620,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7246\/revisions\/7620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}