The Guardian (online) has published the top 100 baby names for 2010. It serves as a great reminder how names come in and out of fashion. As a teenager addicted to detective fiction, I noticed how housemaids were always called Ruby, and that people in history programmes recounting their wartime experiences had names like Doris, Doreen or Stanley. Ruby for one has come back into fashion, standing at number seven in the charts, though it has dropped five places since the previous year, and I've just about got over the surprise of reading about pop stars and models called Ruby or Lily (you can't be, those are 1930s housemaids' names).
However, it looks as though half a century really does represent a low point in the cyclical popularity of what we call our children. My baptismal name just creeps into the top 100 of names newly bestowed in 2010, but the diminutive form of it I've always been called by is nowhere to be seen, and the System's Administrator's name doesn't make it either (although that was never very popular). Thinking back to my school days, the names of my classmates and associates are remarkably absent. Susan, for example. There were always people called Susan. Likewise Margaret (Maggie), Nicola (Nicole makes it in 2010), Jane, Helen, Lisa and Judith. And for the boys Steve, Peter (Pete), Andy (probably christened Andrew), Kevin, Simon, and Christopher, all absent. If you didn't allow those names you would render about half of my class at school (OK, a third), members of my youth drama group, or my age cohort at work innominate. There was even a joke on R4 not so long ago, along the lines that you can't call a little baby Keith.
The other bit of fun you can have with the top 2010 names is matching them to social background. It's harder with the girls' names, since former middle-class favourites like Sophie and Emily are now ubiquitous, but you suspect that little Paige, and Kayden and Kian are not so likely to grow up in mini Boden as some of the others.
On past form I should say that given another ten years or so and the names that were being dished out in the early 1960s will be coming back into fashion, so that by the time I'm in the retirement home I'll be able to watch celebrities and pop singers called Paul and Amanda (Mandy) on daytime TV.
If you want to look at the Guardian list for yourself you'll find it here. I was looking for the UK list for 1960 for comparison, but could only come up with US data and got bored with it. Now I have to go and spread out some more gravel.
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