Top 5 Baby Names of the Past 5 Years

I know a couple that named their kid Narnia.

Mercedes was a girl's name before the car. The founder named the company after his daughter.

Allegra has long been an Italian girls name. Please don't draw your wisdom from a a character on the sopranos who is supposed to be stupid.

What do you think the chances are that the name Nosmo King will become all the rage?

Where does 'Cosmo' fall in the list?

This one here takes the cake:

Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K

I'm so glad that 35 years later, I'm still a classic.

Yup, American-Italian and Catholic -- I was gonna get ONE of the Apostles. As a lapsed Catholic, I guess that worked out well.

I aalways read these lists before I name my kids (well, both times).

Then the wife and I find somethign that's NOT on it.

No intention of my kid being one of 18 'Matthews' or 'Joshs' in their grade school classes.

Nope -- uniqueness is our thing.

Kal-el and his little brother Legolas are fine just the way they are -- and will one day be joined by sister Wonder Woman. :P

Unsurprisingly, the guest book for that baby has been disabled :-P

I'm glad that when I hear someone say "Thor" I know they're talking to me. How do you folks with popular names deal with that? "Hey Dan. No, not you. DAN."

Nicknames are your friend - I and the other 2 Daves in one of my circles of friends are known as Chavez, Arkansas, and Umlaut.

And though we aren't expecting any time soon, I continue to work on getting my wife to accept that the name "Jane" has a coolness to it.

That's part of the reason why we've named our children as we did...

My daughters don't have to worry about there being more than one Scotia or Ainsley in their class. They are right little individuals.

We're having a little trouble with our soon to be newest addition. We know it's a boy and somehow naming him Christopher, or Andrew, or Greg just doesn't sound right.

Can you imagine calling them in for supper? "Scotia! Ainsley! Billy! Time to eat!" just wouldn't work.

Right now we're stuck on Gavin, Gage or Strathan (pronounced Staw-an)

There was a news report in the UK about this and I swear I saw someone had called their kid Blade.....

still kicks the sh*t out of being called (An)Drew Peacock.

Though I always hoped that Optimus suddenly became popular.

...... guess not

My fiance and I are set on Abram Flynn for a boy or Eliza Nazarene for girl. I despise the common name thing. My fiance's mother asked me what was wrong with those type names:

"They're just too normal!"

"What's wrong with normal?"

(stunned silence, then) "Well, everything for starters."

(awkward silence throughout the rest of dinner)

Freakonomics has several chapters regarding naming conventions. They are a "must-read" for folks who are interested in the topic.

Did Grace ever die down in popularity?

Mercedes is a car that was named after a kid.

I just realized that "Urhines" is probably pronounced "your highness". And here I was thinking that the truly cool were trying to name their children "urinates" in what they thought was Dutch.

Is it just me or do you form opinions of different names based on people you've known with that name? I do big time, I also think that what a kid is named shapes their personality a noticable amount. Like for example, there is no chance I name my kid Justin, almost every Justin I've ever known, and there have been a lot of them, has been a cheesy douchebag that I can't stand, and that's not even including Justin Timberlake. I'm not saying it's impossible for me to like a person named Justin, but what's happened so far has really fucked up my perception of that name. How the hell is Jacob so high on the list, that name blows and I rarely hear of anyone with it. I also not to crazy about the names Nathan or Adam, for girls, I've never been a big fan of Nicole, Nora, or Susan. Take everything I'm saying here with a grain of salt, I understand that most people don't name themselves.

Jose is the #1 name in Texas, I wonder why that is, what's #2 and 3, Juan and Oscar. Hunter is #2 in Wyoming, if any given boy's father owns a gun, his chances of being named Hunter go from 1 in 1000, to 1 out of 2.

catboreal, I'd go with Gavin or Gage, with Stratham he'll be correcting people on the pronunciation his whole life, probably pretty annoying.

I've never met a reliable Ben.

Substitute teaches were alway really fun growing up. In high school one class had four of us, and the teacher was going through a hard pregnancy. Is Robert Hill here, four yes answer, or the all at once, “which one?” Your middle name is your friend. It also plays havoc with data base searches. Often I just give my phone # or address it is easier for the person to find me that way. The good news is my name is so common that just giving it to people does not help them find out any thing about me. Robert Hill is like one of the top 3 most common full names with John Doll and Joe Smith.

I fought hard to have my second child named Roman, but my wife said no freaking way, so we agreed upon Lex. With our latest addition, we named her Lana.

So when we started spreading the word, we noticed we had to correct some people with the pronounciation. Some would say LAW-na, and others would say Laa-Naaa. We liked Law-na (like the Smallvillian woman). When we tried to get a middle name, we chose Madonna, so you could call her "Lana Madonna" as a little cutie nickname, and then force people into getting the "LAW" part right. I mean, its not pronounced Madanna, right?

So there are my kids names. Jesten Thomas, Alexander Luthor and Lana Madonna.

anyhow. I need help I guess.

I hope you realize that naming your kid Lex Luthor is probably going to lead to his getting beaten up.

That settles it. I'm naming my kids Constitution Defender, Biggest Penis Ever, and Miller Highlife. I see them as kind of being the Soda Pop and Pony Boy of my generation.

So, I was walking through Marlborough Mall the other day (Seabass can vouch for the white trashiness of this mall) and a I heard some 200 pound spandex clad lady yelling after her child:

Lady: Tash....Tash...Attache Konowalchuk you get back here!

I have never wanted to punch someone so hard in my life...I really felt bad because the lady was carrying a baby whom I assumed was named "Backpack" or "Halliburton"

You've never seen Night of the Living Dead? Or eaten Uncle Ben's rice?

there was also Ben Johnson who beat Carl Lewis in the 88 olympics only to have his medal taken away because he was on steroids. I think there were more black Ben's born in the seventies than there are now, it's probably a name that's fallen to the wayside due to the more "creative" names of today like Ladanian and D'Brickashaw. Let me see if I can drum up a couple sleeper names that have been popular in the black community, by sleeper I mean nothing obvious like Andre or Lamont,...... Carl is one, Marcus, Earl used to be one, maybe even Roy, but where the brothers really take it to a whole nother level is with the feminine first names usually ending in Y, Tracy, Stacy, Percy, Chauncey, there's probably 5 or 6 more. Not a lot of the brethren are named Stuart, Dale, Tim, Mark, or Doug however.

'Tyrone' used to be very big. I think it was because of Tyrone Power, even though Power was white. When I worked in a video store, playing a Power film often inspired terrific stories from African-American customers of a certain age--guys who were kids in the '40s, mostly. I've noticed that Hawaiians of the same generation dig Power too, but they don't seem to have gravitated to the name as much.

I once met a girl named Lufituaeb.

Figure it out and question why.

Edited to say- It was pronounced Loo-fa-tube. Arg.

Beats "Ylgu". "Loofah-tube"? Did the other kids call her Spongey?

I actually find it somewhat amazing that you've ever met a white male named Tracy or Stacy. There's Tracy McGrady, Tracy Morgan, Stacy Augmon and Stacey King were nba players in the 90s but were kind of obscure. Quincy is another one that's popular. Although rich white kids get off the wall names regularly, a lot of times in those cases they are named with a weird last name for a first name, like Wentworth Brambleton III, I made that up but you get my point, acutally Farnesworth Bentley I would definitely consider to be a more typical name of white trust fund kid at a boarding school somewhere.

I should also mention that in the south names of regular white guys get pretty strange, there are Jared's growing on trees down there, that subway guy must be from below the mason dixon line, and of course Hunter is popular, and I actually met two different white guys named Aubrey which goes against my previous observations.

But wouldn't beautiful backwards be ugly? I don't know....

I was also friends with a guy named Ysiad in high school. Forgot what ethnicity he was, but apparently it was standard that if they were expecting a kid of another sex they'd spell the name backwards.