What's in a name anyway?

Yahoo’s front page had the usual blurbs today, but one caught my attention. Seems I’ve been delving into names, common and not, a lot lately.

I’ve been researching names for the characters in my current novel-in-process and Yahoo offered a comparison of the most popular baby names in 1950 to those of 2007. These were US names only.

My alter-ego, J’linn Kramer, was recently featured at Sandy Lender’s www.todaythedragonwins.blogspot.com. I wanted my pen name to be different from the norm and yet to also use my maiden name in honor of my greatest tormentors to “write more”, my dad and his dad. A derivative was all that was needed. I’ve since encountered a JaeLynn, but that doesn’t count. (If you’re of the persuasion, say a prayer for Sandy as she begins chemo this week. Drop by her blog and leave a message to let her know you’re sending kind thoughts her way.)

My husband was born in 1950 and he has the most popular first name and the 4^th most popular name as his middle name, which he goes by. I was born a couple of years later. My parents didn’t use much imagination either. I ended up with the most popular first name for a girl.

I once again wondered why there was so little creativity back then. Was this a generation of total conformists? No wonder there were so many uprisings in the 60’s!

Then I took another look at the 2007 names. Ticking off the names of grandchildren here. Let’s see … we have two boys with the number 2 choice as a middle name, one boy with number 1 and one boy with number 8 first names. And the girls roll in with one number 8 and one number 9 first names. Only LaTosha (the one who will make us great-grandparents in January), Sydney Anna-Marie, one of our two grandsons named Nicholas, and Zachary, didn’t make either list.

I’m thinking most of us haven’t digressed so far from the conformists of 1950.

Most popular boy/girl baby names in 1950:

1. James / Linda
2. Robert / Mary
3. John / Patricia
4. Michael / Barbara
5. David / Susan
6. William / Nancy
7. Richard / Deborah
8. Thomas / Sandra
9. Charles / Carol
10. Gary / Kathleen

Here's the list from last year:

1. Jacob / Emily
2. Michael / Isabella
3. Ethan / Emma
4. Joshua / Ava
5. Daniel / Madison
6. Christopher / Sophia
7. Anthony / Olivia
8. William / Abigail
9. Matthew / Hannah
10. Andrew / Elizabeth

Speaking of the 1950’s, today I found the perfect blog for us old farts: http://www.hownottoactold.wordpress.com