Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Author:Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner [Levitt, Steven D. & Dubner, Stephen J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: William Morrow, ISBN-13: 9780061234002
ISBN: 9780060731335
Amazon: 0060731338
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: 2005-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

A R o s h a n d a b y A n y O t h e r N a m e

3. Katherine

4. Madison

5. Rachel

Most Common “Low-End” White Girl Names in the 1990s

1. Amber

2. Heather

3. Kayla

4. Stephanie

5. Alyssa

Notice anything? You might want to compare these names with

the “Most Popular White Girl Names” list on page 184, which in-

cludes the top ten overall names from 1980 and 2000. Lauren and Madison, two of the most popular “high-end” names from the 1990s, made the 2000 top ten list. Amber and Heather, meanwhile, two of the overall most popular names from 1980, are now among the “low-end” names.

There is a clear pattern at play: once a name catches on among

high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber and Heather started out as high-end names, as did Stephanie and Brittany. For every high-end baby named Stephanie or Brittany, another five lower-income girls received those names within ten years.

So where do lower-end families go name-shopping? Many people

assume that naming trends are driven by celebrities. But celebrities actually have a weak effect on baby names. As of 2000, the pop star Madonna had sold 130 million records worldwide but hadn’t generated even the ten copycat namings—in California, no less—required to make the master index of four thousand names from which the

sprawling list of girls’ names on page 304 was drawn. Or considering 1 8 5

F R E A K O N O M I C S

all the Brittanys, Britneys, Brittanis, Brittanies, Brittneys, and Brittnis you encounter these days, you might think of Britney Spears. But she is in fact a symptom, not a cause, of the Brittany/Britney/Brittani/

Brittanie/Brittney/Brittni explosion. With the most common spelling of the name, Brittany, at number eighteen among high-end families and number five among low-end families, it is surely approaching its pull date. Decades earlier, Shirley Temple was similarly a symptom of the Shirley boom, though she is often now remembered as its cause.

(It should also be noted that many girls’ names, including Shirley, Carol, Leslie, Hilary, Renee, Stacy, and Tracy began life as boys’

names, but girls’ names almost never cross over to boys.)

So it isn’t famous people who drive the name game. It is the family just a few blocks over, the one with the bigger house and newer car.

The kind of families that were the first to call their daughters Amber or Heather and are now calling them Lauren or Madison. The kind of families that used to name their sons Justin or Brandon and are now calling them Alexander or Benjamin. Parents are reluctant to poach a name from someone too near—family members or close friends—but many parents, whether they realize it or not, like the sound of names that sound “successful.”

But as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents

begin to abandon it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower-end parents may not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower-end parents, meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper-end parents have broken in.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.