Here are two names that piqued my interest as I read through the baby name rankings for England and Wales yesterday.
Honey
Honey was the 190th most popular baby girl name on the list. Parents have also been using alternative spellings of Honey, and throwing (pouring?) Honey into compound names. Here are all the Honeys I spotted:
- Honey (278 babies)
- Honey-Rose (8)
- Honey-May (6)
- Hunnie (6)
- Honey-Mae (4)
- Hunni (4)
- Hunny (4)
- Honey-Marie (3)
They honey-names don’t even account for a tenth of a percent of all the baby girls in the data set, so I wouldn’t call them trendy. But they’re definitely on the radar.
Can’t say I’m on board with Honey. To me, honey is either a term of endearment or something I use in my tea. I like it for dogs and cats, but not for humans. (Would make a great stripper name, though.)
Honey has never charted here in the U.S., but I have seen it on birth announcements before.
Brandon-Lee
Lee was a very common second element in compound names for both genders. Despite this, I’d bet at least a few of the baby Brandon-Lees I saw were named specifically for Brandon Lee, the actor who died while filming cult favorite The Crow (1994). Here are the numbers:
- Brandon-Lee (23 babies)
- Brandonlee (4)
- Brandon-Leigh (3)
The only “-Lee” names to rank higher than Brandon-Lee were Jayden-Lee (29), Harvey-Lee (26), and Tommy-Lee (26).
Source: Office for National Statistics
2 Comments
I wonder if the “Tommy-Lee”s were inspired by the drummer from Motley Crue, or by Tommy Lee Jones…
And I wonder if “Harvey-Lee” has anything to do with the singer Harvey Lee… or with Lee Harvey Oswald.
At first, I thought a few of the Tommy-Lees might have been inspired by the reality TV show Tommy Lee Goes to College, but the dates don’t quite match up — the show aired in 2005, and these names are from 2008.