How popular is the baby name Stan in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Stan.
The graph will take a few seconds to load, thanks for your patience. (Don't worry, it shouldn't take nine months.) If it's taking too long, try reloading the page.
“Everly” is hot…”Beverly” is not. It’s a one-letter difference between fashionable and fusty.
If you’re sensitive to style, you’ll prefer Everly. It fits with today’s trends far better than Beverly does.
But if you’re someone who isn’t concerned about style, or prefers to go against style, then you may not automatically go for Everly. In fact, you may be more attracted to Beverly because it’s the choice that most modern parents would avoid.
If you’ve ever thought about intentionally giving your baby a dated name (like Debbie, Grover, Marcia, or Vernon) for the sake of uniqueness within his/her peer group — if you have no problem sacrificing style for distinctiveness — then this list is for you.
Years ago, the concept of “contrarian” baby names came up in the comments of a post about Lois. Ever since then, creating a collection of uncool/contrarian baby names has been on my to-do list.
Finally, last month, I experimented with various formulas for pulling unstylish baby names out of the SSA dataset. Keeping the great-grandparent rule in mind, I aimed for names that would have been fashionable among the grandparents of today’s babies. The names below are the best results I got.
Interestingly, thirteen of the names above — Bobbie, Cary, Dale, Jackie, Jimmie, Jody, Kerry, Kim, Lynn, Robin, Sandy, Tracey, Tracy — managed to make both lists.
Now some questions for you…
Do you like any of these names? Would you be willing to use any of them on a modern-day baby? Why or why not?
Dido’s duet with Eminem…”Stan,” [was] a collaboration which she never imagined fans would connect to her son’s moniker.
“Stanley was actually our favorite name, coincidentally both of our favorite names. He could never have been called anything else to be honest,” Dido shares. “I’m so stupid, I didn’t think anyone would make the connection.”
Proud of her choice, Dido jokes the name game in her family is always a fun affair. “It’s fine,” she says of her final decision. “I was named after a crazy queen who threw herself on a fire.”
I’m 26 years old and I can probably count on two hands the number of times a person has gotten the pronunciation of my name right on the first go — a surprising minority, considering it has the word “less” right in it. Whenever someone does get it right, my jaw drops, because these moments are few and very far between — I often consider hugging the person for making me feel so normal. But the other 99 percent of the time, people get my name wrong.
The beginning of this capital story [The Opened Shutters] was not with Tide Mill, however, but with the name Thinkright Johnson. Like certain persons whose appearance before Mrs. Burnham’s mind’s eye has compelled her to write about them, this New Englandish appellation gave birth to a book. Thinkright Johnson–Thinkright Johnson; the name haunted Mrs. Burnham for days and weeks, “till I knew that the only way I could have any peace was to write something about him.”
Clara is my 2-year-old Wheaten terrier and one of several dogs in my neighborhood with a name that sounds as if it came from a shuffleboard tournament on a golden-years cruise. Among her pals, Fern is red-nose pit bull, Alfie is (mostly) a black lab and Eleanor is a mix of Bernese mountain dog and poodle.
This pack has led me to conclude that whereas we look back to remote centuries when giving children trendy names like Emma, Sebastian, Julian or Charlotte, we name our dogs after our grandparents.
[…]
This means that future generations of dogs should be prepared to be called the mom-and-dad names of today. Names like Kimberly, Jason and Heather.
The country nowadays is full of children burdened with grotesque names. Are we to ban them? If you forbid Cyanide, should you permit Chardonnay? A further complication is that the little girl is a twin, and her mother wanted to call her twin brother Preacher. This too Lady Justice King forbade because, although Preacher ‘might not be an objectionable name’, ‘there was considerable benefit for the boy twin to be in the same position as his sister’ and for both to be named, as was proposed, by their half-siblings. We are not told what names the half-siblings want. I do hope it is something kind and simple, like Jack and Jill.
Rachida Dati reacted angrily after journalist Eric Zemmour criticised her choice of name for seven-year-old daughter Zohra.
He said it was unpatriotic because it did not come from an official list of French Christian names.
[…]
He added: “I consider that by giving Muslim first names, you are refusing to accept the history of France.”
[…]
“Do you find it scandalous to give your mother’s name to your children?” [Rachita Dati] asked, in a vigorous defence of her choice of name.
“I loved my mother. I have a little girl, and I called her after my mother. Like millions of French people do every day.”
From the 2013 book The Lahu Minority in Southwest China: A Response to Ethnic Marginalization on the Frontier by Jianxiong Ma:
When a baby is born, his or her name is decided by the birthday tiled by the twelve zodiac days together with gender, so he or she will normally be named Za Birthday for male or Na Birthday for female. For example, if two babies were born on the rat day (fa ni) and the ox day (nu ni) respectively, if they are boys, their names should be Zafa and Zanu, but if they are girls, their names should be Nafa and Nanu, and so on. […] In general, there are about 45 names that can be used in the village for individual persons, even though the very basic names total 24, twelve days for both male and female members.
(The extra baby names used by the Lahu are essentially replacement names used in case of childhood sickness. These replacement names also follow specific formulas.)
In the girls’ top 10, Lena replaces Fien (short for Jozefien, the Dutch form of Josephine). In the boys’ top 10, Seppe and Jules replace Lars and Alexander.
I would have guessed that Seppe was a diminutive of Joseph (akin to the German name Sepp). According to a Behind the Name contributor, though, Seppe is a West Frisian name that can be traced back to Sibe, a “Frisian short form of masculine names that have sigu or sigis for a first element” and a second element begins with the letter b (e.g., Sibald, Sibert).
About 32% of Belgians live in the southern region, Wallonia, where the official language is French (and, in some areas, German). Here are the top 10 baby names for Wallonia:
In the girls’ top 10, Jade replaces Manon. The boys’ top 10 includes the same 10 names.
About 10% of Belgians live in the Brussels Capital Region, where the official languages are Dutch and French. Here are the top top 10 baby names for Brussels:
In the girls’ top 10, Malak and Anna replace Ines and Louise. In the boy’s top 10, Amir, Lucas and Yanis replace Ayoub, Nathan and Anas.
Morocco World News notes that “heavy immigration from Morocco and other Muslim countries has left its traces, as Mohamed has been the most common male name in the Brussels Region recently.” Mohamed was the #1 boy name in Brussels from the late 1990s until 2011, in fact. And the same wave of immigration has given a big boost to many other Arabic names (Amir, Bilal, Hamza, Imran, Malak, Nour, Rayan, Yousra, etc.) within the last few decades.
My husband and I have been traveling a lot recently, so we’re often dealing with not-so-great internet connections, and I’m often seeing (and playing) that T-Rex game on Chrome’s “This webpage is not available” error page.
T-Rex, before the game begins.
In the vintage-style video game you have to keep an endlessly running T-Rex alive by making him/her jump or duck to avoid obstacles (cacti & pterodactyls).
It’s not the most mentally stimulating game in the world, but it’ll take your mind off your connectivity issues for a few minutes.
T-Rex impaled by a pterodactyl — game over!
Whenever I play, I can’t help but wonder: Does this dino have a name?
Weirdly, Google already has a named T-Rex. There’s a life-sized T-Rex skeleton called Stan on display at Googleplex. It’s possible that he was the inspiration behind this miniature digital dino.
Even if this is the case, though, I don’t think the Chrome T-Rex should be “Stan, Jr.” I think he/she needs a unique name.
So here’s the question of the day: What would you name Chrome’s cute little T-Rex? Why?
Tuesday’s post about the Victorian-style Tylney Hall Hotel reminded me of a list of Victorian-era names that I’ve had bookmarked forever.
The list was created by amateur genealogist G. M. Atwater as a resource for writers. It contains names and name combinations that were commonly seen in the U.S. from the 1840s to the 1890s. Below is the full list (with a few minor changes).
Victorian Era Female Names
Victorian Era Male Names
Abigale / Abby
Ada
Adella
Agnes
Allie
Almira / Almyra
Alva
America
Amelia
Ann / Annie
Arrah
Beatrice
Bernice
Charity
Charlotte
Chastity
Claire
Constance
Cynthia
Dorothy / Dot
Edith
Edna
Edwina
Ella
Eleanor
Ellie
Elizabeth / Eliza / Liza / Lizzy / Bess / Bessie / Beth / Betsy
