from the baby-by-any-other-name-would-smell-as-sweet dept.
Maverick was first used as a baby name after a television show called "Maverick" aired in the 1950s, but its popularity rose meteorically in 1986 with the release of the movie "Top Gun." Today, it is even used for baby girls.
[...] So, what's in a name—or, at least, what's in a baby name trend? University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Mitchell Newberry has found that the more popular a name becomes, the less likely future parents are to follow suit. Same goes for popular dog breeds: Dalmatians today are a tenth as popular as they were in the 1990s.
Newberry, an assistant professor of complex systems, says examining trends in the popularity of baby names and dog breeds can be a proxy for understanding ecological and evolutionary change. The names and dog breed preferences themselves are like genes or organisms competing for scarce resources. In this case, the scarce resources are the minds of parents and dog owners. His results are published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
[...] Newberry used the Social Security Administration baby name database, itself born in 1935, to examine frequency dependence in first names in the United States. He found that when a name is most rare—1 in 10,000 births—it tends to grow, on average, at a rate of 1.4% a year. But when a name is most common—more than 1 in 100 births—its popularity declines, on average, at 1.6%.
The researchers found a Greyhound boom in the 1940s and a Rottweiler boom in the 1990s. This shows what researchers call a negative frequency dependent selection, or anti-conformity, meaning that as frequency increases, selection becomes more negative. That means that rare dog breeds at 1 in 10,000 tend to increase in popularity faster than dogs already at 1 in 10.
Conformity is necessary within species, Newberry says. For example, scientists can alter the order of genes on a fly's chromosomes, and it does not affect the fly at all. But that doesn't happen in the wild, because when that fly mates, its genes won't pair with its mate's, and their offspring will not survive.
However, we also need anticonformity, he says. If we all had the same immune system, we would all be susceptible to exactly the same diseases. Or, Newberry says, if the same species of animal all visited the same patch of land for food, they would quickly eat themselves out of existence.
Journal Reference:
Newberry, M.G., Plotkin, J.B. Measuring frequency-dependent selection in culture, Nat Hum Behav (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01342-6
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @02:17PM (6 children)
People are all trying too hard to be anti-conformists, resulting in conformism in another direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @02:23PM (2 children)
Yep, have we learned nothing from hipsters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @04:19PM (1 child)
Avo on toast will cost you in the long run?
(Score: 3, Touché) by kazzie on Friday June 03 2022, @05:22PM
Not as much as if you toast your Avometer.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday June 03 2022, @06:51PM (2 children)
So presumably the most truly non-conformist way to name your offspring would be with a GUID.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @06:55PM
My name would be a GUID if all those other a-holes hadn't picked the same one!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @12:43AM
What do you think the 5G chips were for? Now we all have our very own MAC address.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @02:31PM (4 children)
https://bilderbergmeetings.org/press/press-release/participants [bilderbergmeetings.org]
Yup, there's always a Microsoft bitch in there somewhere.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @03:33PM (2 children)
Palantir too.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @06:37PM (1 child)
I'll bet nobody is eating bugs at that soiree.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @01:20AM
Don't be so sure. Whenever my dad cooked up crab or lobster, he referred to them as "bugs".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @03:49PM
weeeh lists!
removing one company from the list, theoretically, and see how the world would change.
remove one at random and imagine.
methinks there's one, if ut didn't exist, the rest would have had a hard time co-ordinating anything, including organising a meeting.
hint: it's the hi-tech version of a factory that makes carrier-pigeon coups ^_^
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday June 03 2022, @09:21PM (10 children)
did anyone call their kid Gomer or Opie?
Or Starbuck? (M/F?)
I pity the poor fool that doesn't name their kid Mr. T!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @10:54PM (3 children)
I was named after a toilet.
(Score: 4, Funny) by kazzie on Saturday June 04 2022, @06:09AM (1 child)
Who named the toilet first, and why did you have to wait?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Monday June 06 2022, @02:27PM
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107977/characters/nm0001772 [imdb.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Saturday June 04 2022, @08:02PM
Ferguson?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:11AM (1 child)
It happens. I have met two girls named Seven (and later, a man named Chakotay!).
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday June 04 2022, @06:30AM
There were four Chakotays born in England and Wales in 2000 per the ONS (see my post below).
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday June 04 2022, @06:27AM (3 children)
Seventeen baby boys named Opie in England and Wales* in 2020, making 59 since 2015. Opie is a well-known surname [wikipedia.org] in the UK too.
Also at least three girls named Seven in each of 2000, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2020. No sign of any of the other names, though. (The Office for National Statistics only include a name on their annual lists if at least three babies were given that name, for privacy reasons.)
*Wales is grouped with England, but Scotland and Northern Ireland are done separately. Go figure.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday June 04 2022, @06:27AM
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesinenglandandwalesfrom1996 [ons.gov.uk]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:01PM (1 child)
6 boys named Mal. Bad.
A lot of girls named Serenity, also a lot for Kaylie.
No one named Firefly. SURPRISE!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 07 2022, @02:56PM
You want to find really dumb names. Start looking your favorite liquors.
https://www.popular-babynames.com/name/tequila [popular-babynames.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:09AM (3 children)
It's trend following. It's only evolution if there is some kind of fitness function.
Dalmatians are high energy dogs and aren't the best pet breed, especially for first time dog owners. So when everyone gets tired of the movie, they go back down in popularity.
Names are a little different. I was born in the mid-70s when every other girl was named Jennifer. In my junior high class with 30 students, there were three Jennifers. Nobody wants this. Well, not in America. In Arab countries everyone is named Mohammed and that's just kind of how they do things.
But it turns out there is actual evolution, too. People with "sexy" names like Emma or Ryan are consistently rated more attractive than people with "unsexy" but still common names like Bill or Beth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:54AM (1 child)
Not to be racist or anything but some of the names black people name their kids seem more like de-evolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @08:00AM
"Not to be racist, but I'm going to be racist"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @08:22AM
Well, how about "Karen"?
( If you didn't get it, look up a Karen.
I know a male Karen, and he embarrasses the hell out of me when I am in public with him.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Saturday June 04 2022, @01:56PM
We gave oou kids very unusual first names (with ordinary middle names if they didn't like being unusual) . Today, one name is in the top 20 or 30 maybe, for a while it was in the top ten. Our kid, now grown, finds this really annoying.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @02:17PM
To see what names were popular in books, I tried this search, first in lowercase:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=tom%2Cthomas%2Cdick%2Crichard%2Charry%2Charold&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3# [google.com]
Then Capitalized:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Tom%2CThomas%2CDick%2CRichard%2CHarry%2CHarold&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3 [google.com]
Looks like the popularity of your standard Tom, Dick & Harry have varied over the years. A predictable spike in Harry during the 1940s, when Harry Truman was VP and President, and of course recently with Harry Potter. The recent spike in dick (lowercase) might have something to do with sexting(grin)?