Picking baby’s name a test of originality

NEW YORK – What’s going to happen to Michael?

Will he go the way of Jennifer and Amy, fading out of the spotlight, or will he learn a lesson from Matthew, who avoids the headlines but always turns in a solid, consistent performance?

Either way, Michael is at a turning point: After more than three decades as the top name for boys, Michael is not on BabyCenter.com’s top 10 list of most popular names. It slipped to No. 12 on the 2005 list and has stayed there.

Most people who track trends know that children are pretty good arbiters of what’s hot, what’s not and what’s next. It turns out this all starts on the day they’re born, as the names they are given often fit into larger social and cultural trends.

When the colonists arrived on U.S. shores, they purposely spurned classic English names in favor of biblical ones. In the 19th century, literature served as a source of inspiration – hence the popularity of Ida, a princess in a Tennyson poem. And beginning in the 20th century, people have named their children after movie stars and TV characters.

So, what’s up with Michael, which reigned supreme as a boy’s name for 50 years?

Linda Murray, editor-in-chief of the BabyCenter Web site, said too much publicity about how popular the name was led some parents to avoid it. “What’s happening is that boys’ names are loosening up, getting more creative, and I only expect to see more of that,” she said.

Michael is still second on the Social Security Administration’s 2005 name list, the most recent one available. The Social Security list registers first names that appear on birth certificates. Many children, though, actually are called nicknames or their middle names.

Murray thinks her list of a database of 374,522 names accurately reflects cultural trends because it ranks names by sound, not spelling, so all the Kaitlyns and Catelyns are counted together. Together, the 45 spellings of Mackenzie made it the 27th most popular name, while the Social Security list ranks the most common spelling of Mackenzie as No. 50.

Also, Murray says, the government’s 2006 list won’t be out for several months, and parents have become so concerned with not naming their children with a common name, they want to know what to avoid.

“People are looking for something unique. They don’t want a name on the top 10 list, so they dig down,” Murray explained.

Still, today’s top names – Aiden for boys and Emma for girls – aren’t as overwhelmingly popular as the top names from a generation ago, when it seemed everyone had multiple Michaels and Jennifers or Jessicas in their class.

“Somebody has to be No. 1, even if there are fewer of them. We’re choosing from a much broader range of names than we used to,” Murray said. “There’s a lot of volatility of the list. … There’s a lot of movement in the top 10 from year to year and even more in the top 100.”

New parents don’t like to admit it, but chances are their name choices were influenced by pop culture or the media, according to Lesley Bolton, author of “The Complete Book of Baby Names” (SourceBooks).

Both Murray and Bolton cite Reese Witherspoon as an example. There aren’t a lot of little Reeses running around, but the name Ava wasn’t even on BabyCenter’s top 100 list when the daughter of Witherspoon and estranged husband Ryan Phillipe was born in 1999. In 2006, though, it was No. 3.

Bolton also points to the re-emergence of Emma as a popular name after Jennifer Aniston’s character gave birth to one on “Friends.”

But even celebrities can go too far. It’s unlikely Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter Apple will spark a boom in fruit monikers.

Names in the news are another factor, Bolton notes. “Katrina – it’s what’s on our mind right now, and all names have an association. We won’t see a lot of Katrinas over the next few years, but it will be considered cool and retro decades from now.”

Using names to honor relatives is a time-honored tradition, and Bolton expects this to be a strong trend in 2007, especially names of grandparents and great-grandparents. “They’re names that have stood the test of time, everyone knows them and can spell them, but they’ve been off the bench for so long that there is a little bit of individuality,” she said. In 2006, for example, Abigail was No. 9.

How is that spelled?

One of the hottest trends in baby names is to tweak, ever so slightly, a classic to create a familiar name with a touch of uniqueness.

According to the 2006 list of top names on BabyCenter.com, which uses a database of 374,522, names, there were 45 ways to spell Mackenzie as a girl’s name.

The variations of Mackenzie:

Mackenzie

Mckenzie

Mackenzi

Mackenzee

Mackinzie

Mackensie

Mackenize

Mackinzy

Mackinsey

Mackenzy

Mackenzey