Wind In My Head: What's in a name...
Wind In My Head
Monday, November 13, 2006
What's in a name...
This morning I was doing some mindless administrative rubbish and realised that names that we consider somewhat common names aren't as common as they seem. From a sample of 2000 people between ages 15 and 18, I've found only 2 Sheryl(s), 1 Gary, 2 Willy (s), 1 Jacqueline, 3 Sophia (s).We've been talking about names lately, especially because I now have a new niece and unlike the previous two, a name hadn't been figured out in advance. The trick is a name that's not too common, even though it seems that names that were once considered common like "Mary", "John", "Peter", "Tom" and "Jane" are hardly seen now.
The trend is the weirder the better and weird may seem appealing because it's a name others don't have, but inventing names sometimes just gets incredibly laughable like "Granville", "Deralyn","Cheetah", "Yonnie" and "Quark" Worse still, there are gnomeless parents who don't realise that names like "Cheetah", "Nebuchadnezzar Olaf", "Panties", "Slutsky" and "Precious Faith" would get them beat up in the playground.
So, the name's important and I'm content calling my new niece Baby Ng until her parents come up with a pretty and safe name for her.
Technorati Tags: names
Ondine tossed this thought in at 15:25
2 thoughts...
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At 5:36 pm
Yuhui said... "Freakonomics" talks about this. In USA at least, middle and lower class families tend to use the names of higher class people. But higher class people are aware of this, and they come up with new names, which then trickle down again.
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At 6:49 pm
said... some of those new names look strangely black. not that i have anything against them, but the sample you're talking about isn't singaporean, is it?