How popular is the baby name Kristen in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Kristen.

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Popularity of the baby name Kristen


Posts that mention the name Kristen

Car-naming formula for “Name Your Car Day” (Oct. 2)

Toyota Corolla

Did you know that October 2 is Name Your Car Day?

Some people have no problem coming up with names for their cars. But not everyone has it so easy.

For those who don’t have a clue which name to choose, here’s a simple formula I came up with.

The Name Your Car Formula

Answer three quick questions:

  • What year was your car made?
  • To you, what gender is the car?
  • At what age did you get the car?

Now check your region’s baby name rankings. If you’re in the U.S., you can find the national rankings on the Popular Baby Names page of the Social Security Administration’s website. If you’re in England, the rankings are on the Baby Names page of the Office for National Statistics website. If you’re in Ireland, try a search at the Central Statistics Office website. For other regions, look at Wikipedia’s Popular Names page. (Use the links in the footnotes.)

Find the set of rankings that corresponds to your car’s YEAR and GENDER. Then scroll down until you find the ranking that matches the AGE at which you got the car. The name with that ranking is now the name of your car.

Want to see how it works? Here are a bunch of examples (using U.S. name rankings):

  • You have a 2009 Nissan Altima. To you, the car is female. You got it at the age of 33. So you go to the 2009 girl name rankings, scroll down to #33, and find the name Gabriella.
  • You have a 1998 Toyota Camry. To you, the car is female. You got it at the age of 44. So you go to the 1998 girl name rankings, scroll down to #44, and find the name Savannah.
  • You have a 1973 Dodge Dart. To you, the car is male. You got it at the age of 20. So you go to the 1973 boy name rankings, scroll down to #20, and find the name Steven.
  • You have a 2011 Lincoln Navigator. To you, the car is male. You got it at the age of 51. So you go to the 2011 boy name rankings, scroll down to #51, and find the name Jeremiah.
  • You have a 1992 Isuzu Trooper. To you, the car is male. You got it at the age of 19. So you go to the 1992 boy name rankings, scroll down to #19, and find the name Anthony.
  • You have a 1986 Mercury Marquis. To you, the car is female. You got it at the age of 41. So you go to the 1986 girl name rankings, scroll down to #41, and find the name Kristen.
  • You have a 1953 Buick Skylark. To you, the car is male. You got it at the age of 65. So you go to the 1953 boy name rankings, scroll down to #65, and find the name Billy.
  • You have a 2005 Volkswagen Jetta. To you, the car is female. You got it at the age of 38. So you go to the 2005 girl name rankings, scroll down to #38, and find the name Rachel.
  • You have a 1989 Ford Mustang. To you, the car is female. You got it at the age of 22. So you go to the 1989 girl name rankings, scroll down to #22, and find the name Michelle.
  • You have a 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle. To you, the car is female. You got it at the age of 31. So you go to the 1968 girl name rankings, scroll down to #31, and find the name Wendy.

What’s Your Car’s Name?

Using this formula, what’s the name of your car?

If you don’t have time right now to look it up, just leave me a comment with the three facts — year, gender, age — and I’ll look it up for you and write back with your car’s new name.

P.S. Please share this post with your friends today! We don’t want anyone’s car to feel left out on Name Your Car Day.

Image: Adapted from 1984 Corolla DX at 544,204 Miles by James Benjamin Bleeker under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Baby name story: Pearl

On September 17, 1984, 37-year-old cooking instructor Diane Avoli was in the middle of teaching her students how to make stuffed cabbage when she went into labor.

She gave birth to a baby girl — her seventh daughter — just a few minutes later.

After the birth, the cooking students helped Diane and her husband choose a name. Here’s how Diane explained it:

They were saying that we should name her after something we were cooking, and someone jokingly suggested cabbage patch, but someone else said ‘pearl’ after a kind of barley we were cooking, so we picked that for a middle name.

The baby was named Kristen Pearl Avoli.

(According to Diane’s website, she has eight children. Her eighth is a boy.)

Sources:

  • “Class Gets Real Childbirth Lesson.” Tuscaloosa News 20 Sept. 1984: 3.
  • “Good thing the cooks could boil water.” Wilmington Morning Star 24 Sept. 1984: 2C.

Typeface baby names: Georgia, Calisto, Rockwell

movable type

I recently discovered that the name of my favorite font, Verdana, was created by combining the words verdant (in honor of the Pacific Northwest) and Ana (the name of the daughter of one of the developers).

Verdana may not be ready for broad use as a baby name, but this still made me wonder: which typeface names can be used as human names? Here’s what I came up with…

  • Albertus
  • Aldus (which was named after fifteenth-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius)
  • Arial
  • Calisto
  • Cambria
  • Cooper, from Cooper Old Style (which was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper in 1918)
  • Franklin, from Franklin Gothic (which was named after Benjamin Franklin)
  • Georgia (which, believe it or not, was named in honor of a quirky tabloid headline: “Alien heads found in Georgia”)
  • Gill, from Gill Sans (which was designed by Eric Gill in 1928)
  • Joanna (which was named after one of the daughters of its designer, Eric Gill)
  • Perpetua (which was named after Christian martyr Vibia Perpetua)
  • Rockwell
  • Roman, from Times New Roman (which was designed for the British newspaper The Times in 1931)
  • Trajan (which was named after Trajan’s Column in Rome).

Many script fonts (i.e., fonts that look like handwriting) also have traditional first names — examples include Andy, Ashley, Bradley, Gigi, Kristen, and Vladimir.

Sources: Wikipedia, Font Library – Microsoft

Image: Adapted from Pescia, stamperia benedetti, caratteri tipografici 02 by Sailko under CC BY-SA 4.0.

[Latest update: Jan. 2024]