Pseudo-Fads: A Puzzle

Aidan Quinn is an actor who was also in Legends of the Fall.

Also, John Corbett's (sympathetic) character on Sex in the City was named Aidan.

On Aiden ... Think Sex and the City!!

There's a whole sociological literature on this. If you had really wanted to give your sons names that other kids didn't have, you could have used a random number generator to give them a series of vowels and consonants. Or indeed called one of them "Adolf" and the other one "Judas".

What you actually wanted to do was to give them a name that was quite-but-not-very-uncommon. And you did that by picking out of a bundle of names that were in the mental category "quite-but-not-very-uncommon". That category is socially constructed. It's also (apparently) quite frighteningly possible to manipulate this sort of socially constructed common-knowledge information.

The trouble with this is that when you apply it to choices more generally, you get something which looks very like JK Galbraith's view of economics.

A good rule of thumb (at least for naming girls) is to choose a name that is very common amongst women aged 25-35. Most women want their daughters to have pretty, but distinctive names. So most of them choose a name that is different. But that means a name that is different from their generation, not the one being born.

People on the fringe like to give their children names that they think no one else has picked. It seems possible that, with enough people doing that, the names could jump up in popularity simply because they aren't popular.

Heh. We named our son Aidan in 1999, thinking it was a pretty obscure name. We knew of Aidan Quinn, but hadn't seen Sex in the City. Couple o' years later, we are starting to see Aidans popping up all over the neighborhood. Very peculiar.

I hope everyone here has read Levitt's stuff on why names become popular.

If you add up the different spellings of Aidan (i.e. add Aiden, Adan, Aden, Aydan, which are all in the top 1000), it's the 6th most common boy name. If you add up all the "-aden" names (aforementioned Aidan variants, plus Jayden, Braden, Kaden and their variants) they combined are more than twice as popular as Jacob, the most common boy name.

Since roughly 40% of all boys' names now end in "n", I have dismissed them out of hand for my children.

Almost all names have waves of popularity, but I hope I'm not the only one that disagrees that picking fringe names ensures that the name will become popular in years soon to come. There are hundreds if not thousands of names that people recognize, but have never (and will never) make it to the big time. I think that you're retarded if you deny the aesthetic appeal of names in parents' choosing them, and simply attribute future popularity to current lack of popularity.

What's interesting to me is that the availability of name popularity data for free on the internet is a big change from 10 years ago, and should really change the dynamics of name cycling, because almost every parent considers their child's name very carefully. For example, people might not name their child Jacob if they knew it was the most popular recent boy name.

I agree that it's slightly embarassing that Bryan chose a name that became so popular, but perhaps he should be flattered that he's ahead of the curve. Levitt for example shows that, along the popularity curve, early adopters of a name tend to be well-off, and then the name passes to lower status families.

Part of the confusion seems related to your definition of a fad.

Just because one did not consciously choose a name that seemed trendy does not mean that one was not inadvertently participating in a fad. We are all participating in cultural fads without realizing it, imagining that we are making highly rational and independent choices when we are actually being influenced by the choices of others.

These partly subconscious memetic dynamics help explain everything from the life cycle of names to changing standards of beauty, fashion, and music.

dsquared is on track. What you note isn't really a different phenomenon from a fad -- it's just a little more nuanced. Here, you are motivated in part by an effort to avoid very common names. Fair enough. But that's the fad. And the names you chose didn't come out of the Ether. You chose faddish names from the category, "not too common names." The ironic bit, of course, is (and I bet this is true for a lot of fads many of which undoubtedly begin as efforts to dis-associate rather than associate) that by following the trend you obviate its very purpose. But, to repeat: I think it quite likey that both names were faddish -- but faddish among a well-defined but narrower group of parents than you might first think to look to in identifying a fad.

For what it's worth, we just had a girl and named her Annabelle. I assume it is not a very common name. But moreover I assume that it will end up being more common than we expected.

If you want a unique name for your kid, choose one that used to be popular 50 years ago. I bet Edna is a safe choice ...

Another option is to pick literary names from books that are more than 500 years old or come from a radically different culture(or both). To give a few examples, you don't see Egil, Vrainamoinenn, Bhimasena, or Rustam in the top thousand names.

If you want a unique name for your kid, choose one that used to be popular 50 years ago. I bet Edna is a safe choice ...

Heh, falling into the trap already ... lots of Sidneys, Wilfs, Graces, Dorothies etc already scampering round the streets of my affluent little early-adopter district.

Aidan Kaplan? Tristan Kaplan?
Tristan = Wagner = Nazis