Choosing a Name
Naming your baby can be surprisingly difficult. There are so many things to think about-will the baby name you’ve chosen go with the family name? Is it likely to go out of style? You may be influenced by many different associations and considerations, but the main thing to remember is that the name you choose is for your baby, and hopefully it will please him throughout the whole of his life.
Fashion
This does influence lots of parents, either consciously or unconsciously. A name can suddenly become very popular-often because of a particular celebrity-and then fall out of fashion equally suddenly, so dating the children bearing it.
It’s very difficult to predict which will be the “in” names in any given year, although some are always popular and many parents define what is fashionable or unfashionable by their own social set. The annual publication The Top Ten of Everything lists the most popular names for boys and girls in any given year. And the Social Security Administration has lists of the most popular names for both sexes, stretching back over a century.
You may be influenced by whether a name is traditional or modern. Some people prefer old, familiar names and shrink from new, invented, or imported names; others see no reason to use names from the past, and choose something that is meaningful to them and part of the age in which they live.
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