By way of Pickle in the City, the Baby Name Wizard is a fun tool that helps you trace the popularity of a given name over the course of the twentieth century. (For what it’s worth, Kevin topped out in the ’60s.)
13 thoughts on “I Took Your Name.”
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Yeah, “Kevin” may have topped out by number in the 1960s, but it increased in rank during the 1970s to being the thirteenth most popular name for boys. The interesting question is: why the sudden jump between the 1940s and the 1950s? Was there a famous Kevin inspiring parents across the country?
ecw…too many questions! Mine peaked in the 1970s…
Can’t think of any famous Kevins in that period…or any famous Kevins, until the recent spate of actors (Spacey, Bacon, Kline, Costner, Pollack…and I’ll throw in Liverpool’s Kevin Keegan.)
Who knows what’s in a name? My two sisters’ names pop up on the radar out of the blue in the ’60’s and ’70’s respectively. My brother’s name — Thaddeus — comes back in vogue in the ’60’s…perhaps because of renewed attention to Thaddeus Stevens? 😉
Try Chastity…it peaked in the 70’s…who knew?
Wishful thinking, perhaps? 😉
Now that you mention it, it seems a lot of the Christian virtue names peaked in or just after the ’70’s (Faith, Hope, Charity, etc.) Perhaps a nice data point for anybody working on Evangelical/New Right stuff.
Whoa…Chastity was one of the names I tried, too! Interestingly, Madonna and Cher? Don’t show up. I was bitterly disappointed. I was hoping pop culture would be a little more pervasive than that.
One pop culture theory for Jennifer is that the box-office succes of _Love Story_ in 1970 took a name already on the rise and pushed it to number one.
Hmm…did anyone check to see how many ’70’s kids were named Preppy?
No Preppy, but check out Buffy.
How did you know my name is Jennifer? (The old joke that if you call out Jennifer to a group of women of questionable virtue, at least one will repond).
Wouldn’t you think that Preppy would have been a 80’s thing? Wait…doesn’t Jennifer die in Love Story? What do you think about mid-90’s names (Hunter, Dakota, Gatherer et cetera), Tedward?
The Baby Name Wizard site’s purpose is to promote a book, and the site has excerpts, including one on trends. “Hunter” would fall under the vogue for using surnames as first names, which is probably a continuation of the 1980s’ soap opera/Dynasty trend of names that seemed classy-sounding but not old-fashioned (Britanny, Ashley). The excerpt mentions that masculine-sounding last names as first names have become popular for girls, such as Madison. This one makes me smile, because I think of how outlanding it seemed when the mermaid in _Splash_ took this name in 1984.
“oulandish,” dammit.
I was trying to think of famous Kevins from the 1950’s and the first one I thought of was the actor Kevin McCarthy, of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) fame. I think of him now as more of a character actor, but perhaps he a leading man in his heyday….