UC Berkeley

In the last half-century, the most popular names given to American children have become less common than ever before. Between 1960 and 2010, the percentage of children receiving the top ten most popular names dropped from roughly 22% to 8%. In 2010, almost 10% of American children received names given to fewer than five children born in the country that year. Increasingly, when naming their children, parents from all demographic backgrounds are choosing something "distinctive" or even truly unique. I argue that this shift in practices reflects an increasing cultural emphasis on individuation, as parents struggle to ensure that their children will "stand out" without being branded as strange.

My dissertation explores the phenomenon of the "widening name pool" using data drawn from a sample of longitudinal birth records and from more than 80 in-depth interviews with contemporary parents and those who named their children in the last few decades. My findings suggest that, rather than a simple side effect of increasing demographic diversity, the shift toward increasing use of distinctive names reflects an active effort on the part of parents to find something "different." Parents explain this choice in terms of a desire to help their child forge a more unique identity, which will also - implicitly - be a stronger one. Contemporary parents feel a sense of pressure to choose a distinctive name, claiming that to do otherwise might lead children to feel somehow less than "special"; however, parents also shy away from selecting a name that could cause children to stand out in the wrong way. My research suggests that, for most parents, the perfectly distinctive name is one with personal meaning for the family, something easily comprehensible by strangers, and in which parents can feel that they've made an "authentic" choice, a concept most often expressed by parents' avoidance of names strongly connected to racial or ethnic groups with whom they have no affiliation.

Although contemporary parents choose distinctive names at significantly higher rates than their counterparts from a few decades past, both groups present remarkably similar rationales for their desire for a distinctive name. I thus suggest that the increasing diversity in contemporary names reflects not only the cultural shift toward individuation but also a reaction to the increasing presence of and emphasis on popularity data in the resources available to parents seeking "expert advice" on naming a child. Thus, my conclusion submits that the widening pool of American baby names, motivated by larger cultural forces, is also self-perpetuating as contemporary parents and experts alike become increasingly conscious of the "need" to avoid the most popular names.