I collect names and names books. I love names. I don't have children (although I do get to use them on game characters), but I have something like five or seven baby name books, because, well, I love names.
So this piqued my interest:
Jacob, Isabella top baby names: Names inspired by 'Teen Mom' and 'Twilight' also gain popularity
In the course of my daily life I see LOTS of children's names. Like the person quoted in the article, I've noticed a trend for traditional names spelled in unusual ways. And names do have trends. You can approximately tell the age of many people from their name, when it was popular on TV or in books, for example.
PS What would my names be for a boy or girl? That has changed over time. When I was younger, it was Tristan (almost unheard of at the time) and Kendra. Tristan became one of the children of a character of mine. Now I favour Julian and Amelia (the former from the pagan emperor, the latter from Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books). Both are Roman names. The middle names would be Trevyn (Cornish) and Niamh (Irish), given my Celtic ancestry. Niamh, by the way, is pronounced 'Neeve'. Each would get a second middle name after my best friend. (That's a trend, too, with more than three names, from what I can tell. I have two middle names myself, for that matter, but then I chose them.) :) Totally academic at this point, as I doubt I'm going to spend my waning years of fertility having babies, but still.
The meaning of names is important too, not just the sound. My own means oath of God (Elisabeth--Hebrew)--butterfly/spring/resurrection (Eilir--Welsh)--spider/web (Aranea--Latin)--mountain ash tree (Rowan--Scots/Irish/English). They were chosen carefully from a religious viewpoint, from ethnicity, and for that matter, from a numerological standpoint (my name numerologically matches my birthdate). What can I say, I was paying for it, I wanted to do it right. :) My old name was Lisa (Hebrew--oath of God) Kay (Greek--pure) Broadbent (English--from the broad and grassy plain). Neither was bad, really, but I never cared for Kay as a name and well, no one could ever spell Broadbent anyway, even though it's two English words together. I'd had a break with my father, the main reason for dispensing with it, but that was a problem as well. Of course now I have the Elisabeth/Elizabeth issue and many people here pronounce the 'Row' in my last name to rhyme with a disturbance rather than what you do to a boat, as there's a local Rowan county pronounced that way, but I can live with that. Just don't call me Liz.
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