The Social Security Administration just released their list of the 1000 most popular baby names of 2011. Topping the list are Jacob and Sophia.
Jacob has held the top spot for something like 13 years running! People, it’s a nice name, but there are others out there! When I was in the fifth grade, there were three Jeff Browns in my class. If your last name is Brown, I think you can afford to be a little more creative with a first name than Jeff. Sophia is taking the reigns for the first time, knocking off Isabella after that name was number one for two years. (Which confirms my theory that parents are more willing to be creative with a girl’s name than a boy’s.)
When it came to naming our own kids, DB and I had vastly different approaches: he saw these lists of most popular names as lists to choose from, while I saw them as lists of names to avoid. Luckily for me, he came around to my way of thinking. I always liked being Alia, having a nearly unique name. Although it’s not so much anymore: The name Alia cracked the top 1000 in 1995, and ranked 732 last year, behind Aliya, number 657, and Aliyah, at 133! Which makes sense, because it is just in the last ten years that I have started hearing my name called in a crowd or at a mall and it’s not for me, it’s for a cute little girl, usually African-American. I certainly can’t claim any influence on that front, I think it was the popularity (starting out on Star Search at age 10 in 1989) and death (in 2001) of the R&B singer Aaliyah.
For our children, I had two rules for names: I wanted a name that was the same in English and Hebrew, and it should be spell-able and pronounce-able for Americans. I loved the name Michal, but didn’t think the hard ch sound would fly. I imagined a daughter being constantly called Mikel or Mitchell. Of course, I wasn’t counting on New Jerseyans penchant for a hard “a” sound. Big Girl’s name has an “ah” sound, but even her NJ-born and raised grandmas had to learn to say it. For her first month they kept saying it the way the “a” is pronounced in Sally, rather than the softer “a” of tallit, but they learned.
The funny thing is her name, although unusual and compliment-getting in the grocery store, is not so unusual in the actively-Jewish world. It ranked number 393 in her birth year (and 431 last year). When she got to kindergarten in Jewish day school, there were two other girls with her name in the grade. Of course she became, and remains, really great friends with both of them. My boys, however, have Hebrew/Israeli names that didn’t crack the top 1000 at all in their birth years or last year. So we bucked my anecdotal trend of being more conservative with boys’ names without even trying.
I’m saying all this without even getting into the “naming after” question. My daughter’s name has the same first letter as my late father’s, but the boys each have their own first name, independent of a dead guy. Each of my kids’ middle names, however, are English and directly the same as a deceased loved one, in Ashkenazi tradition.
I want your input: how did you choose? It’s an important thing you give your child, his or her name. How did you pick among the literally million options?
6 Comments
I am glad to see Isabella no longer number 1. People may be more creative with girls’ names with boys–debatable–but at least Jews rarely name their kids Ferdinand/Fernando. I wish they did the same with Isabella, an abhorrent character and by far the most well known Isabella.
We did not look at these lists for naming our daughters. I used common sense. A name that is too common would be good go avoid but not vital to avoid. Same for something that is too rare. Another rule I feel strongly about is that a girl’s name should not end in -son. We wanted the names to be (roughly) the same in English, Hebrew and Hungarian. We wanted to honor our grand and great grandparents who have passed away. This was tricky since we were having girls and the only recently passed relatives who were women shared their names with living relatives on the other side of the family. For example, my grandmother (zt”l) and my wife’s sister shared the same name. Also, some of the other candidates had names that couldn’t fit the other qualities (language similarity, etc.). So we decided to use initials for the most part. We also really valued what their names meant, particularly in Hebrew.
The site also shows the most common twin name pairings. One was a pairing of boy/girl twins I know, but they are eight and the list is from 2011.
In our family we are all about using the Hebrew names of deceased loved ones. I carry two middle names of my great aunts who perished during the Holocaust. My eldest, Yitzchak Eliezer (after a grandpa and great grandpa) became Jordan Ezer in English. the J for the “yud” because Yitzchak didn’t seem like a name to use in the secular world and we weren’t into Isaac at the time. Yosef Zachariah, in Eng, Zachary Joseph is after my grandfather. My little girl was named Gayle Fay by her birth mother. We intend on calling her Galit Mindel In Hebrew (Galit because it seems like a good match to Gayle and Mindel after my husband’s grandmother). We plan to change her English middle name to an M name but we will keep Gayle. We are thinking of Mia.
Though others in the family have made Yiddish names into Hebrew or used the first initials, my husband and I are very traditional and prefer to keep the names as they were.
Long after we had named our son, our rabbi told me that that parents are inspired prophetically to choose the names we give our children, which I find interesting.
I wanted to name our baby Avi because I just really liked the name and had never heard of anyone with that name. Officially he is Avraham (or Abraham), which is very nice too, as Avraham is the father of the Jewish people. Almost everyone calls our son Avi.
Later I learned that the name Avi is about as popular a name in Israel as John is in the USA. Avi is now 19 and the name still suits him well.
Avi’s full Hebrew name is Avraham Israel Yehuda Berger. The two middle names are after my grandfather and my husband’s grandfather respectively, may they rest in peace. Avi’s full English name is Avraham Joseph Berger. We were wanting to keep the biblical references in his English name.
BTW, your question about names brings up memories and thoughts from a precious time way back when. Thank you for asking!
We had a similar approach to you. All 3 of our boys have an Israeli name – same in English and Hebrew and their first names are original to them, while their middle names are given exactly the same as the family member (deceased) of whom they are named. We also tried to chose Hebrew names that would not be difficult to pronounce here in NJ. The only difference is that our oldest has the Americanized version of his name on all of his American papers and the Hebrew version on his Israeli documents. DH is Israeli. When he was born, we thought he might want the American version one day. Funny thing- yesterday in the car he asked if he could change his name on his American passport to the Israeli version.