Parents name their little stars after big ones
By Maria Puente and Breanne Gilpatrick, USA TODAY
Drop into any preschool in a few years and you're likely to see a lot of backpacks marked with names like Paris and Mariah. But don't expect to find any mini-Madonnas or Clays; some famous names just don't fit with the times.
The name "Paris" is on the rise for little ones.
By Kevin Winter, Getty Images
The celebrity influence on baby names has been with us since the Bible, but now you can track it online: The Social Security Administration website (ssa.gov) has a searchable database that shows the rankings of popular names by year, going back as far as 1880.
The data show that names of celebrities, or the characters they play, soar in popularity as celebrities' careers take off. (Related item: What makes a name popular?)
Example: Paris as a girl's name shot up in popularity from 2002 to 2003, coinciding with Paris Hilton's hit TV show, The Simple Life. Paris had been known as a boy's name (The Iliad).
"It was a rare name, especially for girls, but as soon as she hit the news, you could see a nationwide measurable spike," says Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard.
The link between career success and name popularity also is strong with such names as Mariah (Carey),
Shania (Twain) and Norah (Jones). Same with Denzel (Washington), Keanu (Reeves) and Kobe (Bryant).
Experts say parents don't necessarily name their babies after a celebrity; they might not even like the celebrity, but they like the name. And when the celebrity is everywhere in the media, more people are exposed to the name.
"It's the confluence of exposure and the name being unusual, attractive and a bit different," says Pamela Redmond Satran, co-author of nine books on baby names.
It doesn't work for every name. Few parents today are naming their children Madonna or Elvis, for instance.
And some celebrity-inspired names rise and fall for reasons that are sometimes obvious, sometimes not:
There was a spike in Britneys after Britney Spears' first album in 1999, but the name's popularity crashed when she began sexing up her image. (Spears named her new baby Sean Preston; Sean has been becoming less popular in the past 15 years but could rebound because of Spears.)
Monica was declining slightly in popularity before the debut of Friends in 1994, but after the Monica Lewinsky scandal in January 1998, the name dropped sharply.
Clay had been losing steam since 1995, and when Clay Aiken appeared on American Idol in 2003, it spiraled further, Satran says.
Jennifer became hot among Hispanics after Jennifer Lopez hit the scene, even though it had lost its appeal for other ethnic groups because of its ubiquity, says Cleveland Kent Evans, president of the American Name Society.
Some names become trendier than the stars who started them: Jada, as in actress Jada Pinkett, wife of actor Will Smith, and Jaden, their son's name.
"Now there are thousands of people with those names that wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for them," Satran says. "This generation of parents is looking to get away from cookie-cutter stuff, and our culture of celebrities is supporting that."
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