WHAT’S MY NAME???: Virginia Postrel has been posting a bit about fashions in naming. Girls’ names tend to fluctuate in popularity much more than boys’ names–there’s much more variety in girls’ names, and so names like Madison and Ashley come out of more-or-less nowhere and skyrocket to the top of the charts. Then suddenly there’s six Ashleys per classroom, and the name gets overexposed, so parents back off and seek fresher names. A nifty little baby-naming book called Beyond Jennifer and Jason went through a bunch of naming trends and discussed which characteristics people associate with certain names and sounds. (For an easy example, longer names with lots of sibilance or lulling consonants sound more feminine–Clarissa is more feminine than Claire; Laurel is more feminine than Laura. You ask me, a little femminess in a name goes a long way.) There’s also a recurring phenomenon in which parents begin giving girls traditionally male names (Elliot, Ryan); the name eventually becomes ambiguous (Madison); and finally parents just stop giving the name to boys at all (Ashley, Evelyn).

Father Neuhaus of First Things fame always pounces on the new most-popular-baby-names lists when they’re released, and never fails to note that boys get Biblical names or saints’ names (all of the top 10 this year except Tyler), while girls get a widely varying menu of names, rarely Biblical or saintly. (This year the top 10 are half Biblical to half neither-Biblical-nor-saintly.) Father Neuhaus takes this disparity as a sign that boys are taken more seriously–they’re given more serious names, with a heavy weight of tradition behind them.

I’m not so sure. There are a number of possible explanations for the difference in boys’ and girls’ naming trends, and since I really like a lot of “made up” names (especially black American names–I know Latrease/Latrice/Latrysse and Shaniqua/Shineequea/Chanika are six kinds of pain in the neck to spell, they’re really pretty), I’ll throw out a number of explanations for the “made up” girls’ names. (This list is not exhaustive…)

1) Parents (probably subconsciously) want to encourage girls to express their individuality and creativity, whereas boys are thought to need more stability in their lives. An old-faithful name suggests the importance of the past and of long-lasting societal mores. Since women’s roles–for example, mothering and teaching–do often demand a high and often unrecognized degree of creativity and flexibility, and since women tend to avoid risks and value stability more than men (hence women’s lousy record of voting for Big Government!), reinforcing girls’ individuality and boys’ connection to a community seems like a good idea.

2) Gender roles for boys/men simply have less flexibility. Less deviation from the norm is tolerated. Women wear pants; men don’t wear skirts. I will leave others to speculate on why this is, but it almost certainly influences the tendency to give boys more boring names.

3) Total speculation: Feminists have dissed the roles assigned to women in the past so much that people don’t want to associate their daughters with past role models. (This probably doesn’t explain the waning popularity of “Eve”–but then, feminists can’t really decide if Eve was a renegade hero or if Eve was a doormat and Lilith was the “real hero.”) Giving your daughter a new-minted name suggests a lack of ties to the past, especially the religious past. The qualities valued in many Biblical men (strength, courage, leadership, wisdom and so on) are still valued, but Mary’s meekness (and her courage!!!–but don’t get me started on that) has been downgraded to passivity.

4) Boys are more likely to get a “family name”–a name passed down through the generations. Not sure if that’s actually true, so chalk that up as another wild speculation.

I welcome any more thoughts on this subject–as you can tell, I find it as fascinating as Postrel does. Also, if you’ve got any info about similar or opposite naming trends in other cultures, fire ’em at me. eve_tushnet@yahoo.com, folks.

And what about my own favorite names? Well, this nifty item lets you track the American popularity of different names over the decades. My favorite girls’ name, Rosamond (“rose of the world”–a Marian name), hasn’t even charted in more than a half-century. Which means it’s due for a revival! (My tastes in boys’ names, like everyone else’s, are more standard: Michael, Richard, etc.)