Do I Get Any Points for Originality?

I’m always intrigued when the Social Security Administration comes out with its annual list of most popular baby names. In case you haven’t read it somewhere else, Jacob and Emma are at the top for 2008. I happen to have noticed that Emma is also #1 in France. What would Flaubert have to say about that?

The thing that strikes me about this year’s top 20 girls names is that quite a few of them are really nice (Ava, Sophia, Olivia). On the other hand, you have both Madison and Addison in the top 15. Just don’t get it…

Everyone wants a nice name for his/her kid, I suppose. But no one wants to be the fourth little Jacob in kindergarten. Before my kids were born, I checked the lists and immediately ruled out any name anywhere near the top. (Coco might have been just another little Natalie if I hadn’t spotted it in on somebody’s list). Must admit to being a little annoyed when Julia Roberts and Heidi Klum popped out a couple of Henrys in the months/years following my own Hank’s appearance on the scene. But the wave of little Henrys I was dreading doesn’t seem to have materialized. The name has, in fact, jumped in the past three years (from 102 to 78), but it’s still reassuringly far down the list, and I have yet to run into one on the playground. I do think it’s a name one would be more likely to encounter in NYC than in the wilds of exurbia. Out here, there are lots of Aidens, Jadens, Cadens and so forth.

We came across Henry while perusing a baby name book published in the 50s, and it was settled in fairly short order. Little Coco was more of a challenge. I was pushing for a series of old lady names (Helen, Frances, Louise) and Christian was resisting. We were at an impasse and were considering taking her home without a name. However, they apparently won’t let you leave the hospital in Virginia without putting something down on paper, so we would have had to give her a placeholder (like X), and we just could not do it. We settled on Colette in honor of couple of favorite friends and the writer of whom I have long been a fan. Colette was actually one of the names whose prevalence I had failed to research, but based on anecdotal evidence, I figured it was a pretty safe bet. Turns out I had nothing to worry about: Colette appears to have reached its peak in the mid-sixties (around 400) until it dropped off the chart (which goes up to 1000) in 1987. I was a little irritated when friends of friends gave their daughter Colette as a middle name shortly after ours was born. Out common friend swears it was a coincidence. In any case, I got over it.

Jennifer, you may be interested to learn, was #1 for an astonishing 15 years (from 70-84) which explains its prevalence among the playground mommies here and (I’m sure) everywhere else in America. Thanks to my crazy parents, my own (real) name has never appeared in the top 1000. Guess I was born to nonconform…