The Washington Post recently published a pair of articles about babies whose names had been changed.
The first article mentioned that, according to SSA data, nearly 30,000 babies in the U.S. had had their names changed from January 2017 to March 2022.
The second article dug a little deeper, revealing the names that ranked highest on either side of the name-change spectrum: most-abandoned and most-adopted.
| Most-abandoned baby names | Most-adopted baby names |
| 1. Issac [sic] 2. Chole [sic] 3. Aiden 4. Conner 5. Elliot 6. Michael 7. James 8. Isabella 9. Sophia 10. David | 1. Isaac 2. Chloe 3. Sebastian 4. William 5. Olivia 6. Michael 7. Elijah 8. Matthew 9. Connor 10. Jonathan |
The top two names on both lists — Issac/Isaac and Chole/Chloe — clearly represent spelling corrections.
And my guess is that at least a portion of the boys named “Conner” had their names changed to the more common spelling “Connor.” (Connor has been a top-100 boy name since the early 1990s.)
My favorite thing about these rankings, though? The fact that Michael managed to balance itself out by ranking #6 on both lists. :)
(Thank you to Ellyn for letting me know about the WaPo articles!)
Sources:
- Fowler, Sarah. “‘He is not a Joshua’: When you pick the wrong name for your baby.” Washington Post 8 Apr. 2022
- Van Dam, Andrew. “The most-regretted baby names, and more!” Washington Post 12 Aug. 2022.