Social class specific first names ?

November 15, 2005 8:13 AM

Social class specific first names ? Are there in the US any specific trends regarding the choice of first names related to the social class ?

Example (in France ) :
Upper class : Charles-Henri, Victoire, Cassandre, Constance, Bérénice, ...

Lower class (the choice of anglophon names is socially connoted): Kevin, Brandon, jonathan, Brenda...(most of these come from popular american soap operas broadcasted in France).

posted by vincentm to society & culture (23 comments total)

slate
posted by sleslie at 8:16 AM on November 15, 2005

Read the Slate article cited above, then go out and read Freakonomics (the book that it is excerpted from).
posted by matildaben at 8:19 AM on November 15, 2005

Freakonomics has a whole chapter on this.
posted by odinsdream at 8:23 AM on November 15, 2005

wow !
Seems like each metafilterian has read it ! I have to buy it then !
posted by vincentm at 8:26 AM on November 15, 2005

I was going to mention this article too. Except I couldn't remember that it was in Slate.
posted by grouse at 8:33 AM on November 15, 2005

Yes, Freakonomics. It's a quick and enjoyable read. Interesting factoid: the names that are the most strongly associated with white girls of parents with low educational attainment all sound like stage names for strippers (Heaven, Misty, Brandy, Shyanne [sic], Tiffanie [sic], etc).
posted by adamrice at 8:51 AM on November 15, 2005

Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder.

Interesting... though I thought the lower classes were getting names mostly from TV and movies.

BTW, this Baby Name Voyager (Java, may be slow) shows how a name's popularity rises and falls over the decades. I guess if you're class-conscious it's probably smartest to pick a nice name that has fallen into decline and might make a comeback.
posted by rolypolyman at 8:53 AM on November 15, 2005

also recommend the section on names of the much ballyhooed book freakonomics.
posted by alkupe at 9:04 AM on November 15, 2005

There is a continuing thread on Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird about murderers with the middle name Wayne.
posted by kenchie at 9:08 AM on November 15, 2005

IIRC, the "upper-class" American names (which Freakonomics determines based on mother's age and education level at birth of child, as opposed to income) are trending towards obscure Hebrew and Irish choices at the moment. The book actually contains a prediction chart, based on what older, highly-educated women are naming their kids today, of what the most popular names will be ten years from now.

I was also impressed by the many variations of "Jasmine" popular among African-American mothers. There were 4 or 5 different variations ranked in the Top 10. An effect of the Disney movie Aladdin?
posted by junkbox at 9:11 AM on November 15, 2005

I haven't read the book (but will). However, in working with generations of children I made many of the same observations of naming habits.

Another thought worth mentioning, espeically to someone from outside the USA: American well-heeled, old-money types have long had a tradition of bestowing given names that were another family member's last name (usually a female's). This was a way of signalling the family pedigree even though the female name was lost in marriage. This is how you got WASPy first names like Madison, Payton, Carter, Parker, Brooks, Shepherd. You could even make these names up for comic effect to characterize a type of person: "So this Fanning Barringer III type comes up and..."

Interestingly, these sorts of names are becoming among the most popular choices, especially for the middling folks I know. I guess it is more evidence for the earlier assertion:

Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder.
posted by Miko at 9:28 AM on November 15, 2005

I think Paul Fussell touches on this in his book Class - but it's been a while since I've read it. (Cf England's Jilly Cooper's effort, also called Class.)

Any British input on this topic? Or thoughts on transmission of names across the waters, historically if not currently? (Neither Diana nor Camilla have caught on in America.)

I'm thinking of naming the next dog Harrod's.

On preview- the surname as Christian name seems more prevalent in the south, no? At least in my experience.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:40 AM on November 15, 2005

Any British input on this topic?

Well, you could have a look at this thread, from the Times Educational Supplement discussion forum, where Jordan, Liam, Ryan, Conner, Callum, Declan, Kyle, Arren, Shane and Ashley are identified as the names that make teachers' hearts sink when they see them on the register.

As for girls' names, it's a fairly reliable rule of thumb that any name ending in -a (Claudia, Camilla, etc) will be posh.
posted by verstegan at 10:14 AM on November 15, 2005

My friends were telling me about a (white) family of low education who named their son Lothario. They thought it sounded classy.
posted by matildaben at 10:32 AM on November 15, 2005 [1 favorite]

surname as Christian name seems more prevalent in the south, no? At least in my experience.

They're all over New England and have been for generations.
posted by Miko at 10:32 AM on November 15, 2005

where Jordan, Liam, Ryan, Conner, Callum, Declan, Kyle, Arren, Shane and Ashley are identified as the names that make teachers' hearts sink when they see them on the register.

...and make the upper-middle-class WASP-y types in my area smile, given their popularity here (Boston). I'm neutral on most of them, but if you've named your kid "Declan" because it's Elvis Costello's real name, you've scored points with me.
posted by jalexei at 10:56 AM on November 15, 2005

Check out A Matter of Taste. Unlike Freakonomics, it's written for an academic audience, not a popular one, but the topic of the entire book is naming. Actually the topic of the book is fashion and how fashion changes, but the data all comes from names.
posted by duck at 10:57 AM on November 15, 2005

For what it's worth, I have noticed a lot of upper middle class baby girls named Eva (or Ava), Maya, Sophia and Ella over the last couple years. I'm not sure what the short name ending in "a" represents--cuteness, ultra-femininity, perhaps?

Ava and Sophia of course bring to mind glamorous 50s Hollywood actresses, and I can never think the name Ella without thinking of Ella Fitzgerald, although I'm not sure if that's what the parents intended.

I've also noticed a lot of flower names among this same set--Violet, Rose and especially Lily.
posted by Sully6 at 1:24 PM on November 15, 2005

It's really weird to see my own name on the list of names most likely to be popular in 2015, albeit spelled differently (I spell it Kian, not Keyon). As a child, I was the only person I had ever even heard of with my name, and now at 22, I have seen more and more and more baby Kians than I could possibly have imagined- more than a few of whose parents have told me they copied my name. I guess people really do copy success ;)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 3:27 PM on November 15, 2005

I'm just dreading the day techno-geeks to start raiding their own workplaces for babynames. Any day now, maternity nurses and daycare givers among us can expect to start seeing anklebiters answering to:
• Java
• Perl
• SubEtha (good name for a scat-singer, tho)
• Linux (alt. Lynnux, Lynne-Ochs, Linn*x)
posted by rob511 at 4:54 PM on November 15, 2005

Too late -- G. Paltrow and C. Martin have already gone there.
posted by rob511 at 4:56 PM on November 15, 2005

In the American South it's quite common for wealthy parents to give their children "family" names as their first names - I know rich kids in New Orleans named Blaithre, Palmer, Dunbar (those are all girls, believe it or not).
posted by radioamy at 12:16 AM on November 16, 2005

Interesting... though I thought the lower classes were getting names mostly from TV and movies.

Perhaps that's how the hoi polloi find out what's popular among the upper class?
posted by Opposite George at 4:56 AM on November 16, 2005