VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Shirley Griffith. This week on our program, we talk about baby names in America.

VOICE ONE:

Every year, more than four million babies are born in the United States.

Some parents name their children based on family, cultural or religious traditions. Girls are often named after a family member but rarely their mothers. Sons, though, are often named after their fathers.

VOICE TWO:

George Foreman, the former heavyweight boxing champ, has five sons and five daughters. All of his sons are named George: George Junior, George the third, George the fourth, George the fifth and George the sixth. Even two of his daughters have George in their name: Freeda George Foreman and Georgetta Foreman. OK, so this is an extreme example.

VOICE ONE:

So what are the most popular baby names in America? Every year the Social Security Administration releases a list. For boys, names from the Bible were again the leading choices last year.

VOICE TWO:

Jacob was the most popular boy name for the tenth year. Michael spent a tenth year at number two. Michael had been the number one name for thirty-eight years, from nineteen sixty-one to nineteen ninety-eight.

Ethan, Joshua and Daniel were also in the top five. Next came Alexander, Anthony, William, Christopher and Matthew.

VOICE ONE:

Last year Emma was the number one name for girls. Isabella was number two.

For twelve years the most popular name was Emily. But last year Emily fell to third, followed by Madison and Ava. The other names in the top ten were Olivia, Sophia, Abigail, Elizabeth and Chloe.

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VOICE TWO:

These days, the choice of a baby name seems to be guided as much by individual desires as by tradition. This is shown in the fact that the most popular baby names are not as popular as they used to be.

Researchers at San Diego State University in California did a study. They found that thirty-two percent of boys received one of the ten most popular names in nineteen fifty-five. The same was true for twenty-two percent of girls.

By two thousand seven, however, the numbers were down to less than ten percent of boys and only eight percent of girls.

VOICE ONE:

Cleveland Evans is an associate professor of psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska. He is also an expert in onomastics — the study of names and naming practices.

CLEVELAND EVANS: “People are more and more into finding unusual names. And now since we have the information on the Internet — at least in the United States — of what the most popular names are, the percentage of kids who get them actually is going down because people are able to avoid them much more successfully than they did before.”

VOICE TWO:

To get a better sense of the modern name game, we stopped some families out on the National Mall here in Washington, D.C.

MOTHER: “Hailey is the oldest. With her we wanted one that wasn’t too popular. And at the time we were living in New Mexico and we didn’t know anybody that was Hailey. And this is my daughter Caitlin and with this one we just liked the name.”

MOTHER: “She’s Elizabeth, after Elizabeth Taylor. I think my husband was in love with her.”

MOTHER: “This is Derek and I have another son, Dillon. I basically looked through baby books and just found names that I thought were a little bit different. We named both of our kids with Ds. My husband starts with a D and I’m a D. And they’re both Ds, so …

MOTHER: “Stephanie Rafaella. She’s named after my sister-in-law.”

MOTHER: “Well I always liked the name Sebastian, so I wanted to name our older son Sebastian. And Jonathan, to be honest, was kind of random. But his middle name is Miles which is my mother’s maiden name.”

MOTHER: “Elizabeth is named after my grandmother. Daniel is named after Daniel in the Bible. And Zachary sounded wild and fun so we went with it.”

VOICE ONE:

Some parents choose names that really set their children apart.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, named their daughter Apple. They chose it, they said, because the fruit is sweet and wholesome. They chose a less unusual name for their son, Moses.

VOICE TWO:

Singer Ashley Simpson and her husband, singer Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, named their son Bronx Mowgli Wentz. Bronx, after the area in New York City; Mowgli, from a character in “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling.

VOICE ONE:

Some names can be used for either sex, like Sidney, Shawn, Alex and Taylor. Thirty years ago the name Taylor was much more likely to go to a boy than a girl. Today the opposite is true — as evidenced by the young singer Taylor Swift.

Naming expert Cleveland Evans explains that many of these names were traditionally female or male at one time or another.

CLEVELAND EVANS: “For a couple hundred years we’ve had names which have switched gender but they almost always switch from male to female. Leslie and Ashley are examples of that. Now they are overwhelmingly female even though they started out as male. There aren’t very many examples of names which are equally popular for both boys and girls for a really long period.”

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VOICE TWO:

Unisex names can, of course, make it difficult to know if someone is male or female. Alex can be short for Alexander or the female version, Alexandra.

Charlie was last year’s three hundred seventh most popular name for boys. But it also rose to the seven hundred thirty-sixth most popular name for girls.

VOICE ONE:

We met a woman on the National Mall whose nickname is Charlie. She was named after her father’s only brother, who died a few years before she was born. She admits that her name has caused some problems.

WOMAN: “Actually my first name is Charles. When I was in the military they would always assume that somebody had mis-keyed the M versus the F [in personnel records] and would house me with a male roommate or such.”

Sometimes a difference in spelling can identify whether the person with the name is male or female. This brings us to a question we received from China. A listener wanted to know if Billie Jean is considered a girl’s name, or if it can be used as a boy’s name.

You might remember Billie Jean King the women’s tennis star. Of course “Billie Jean” is also one of Michael Jackson’s best known songs. In fact, the question happened to arrive just a few days before the pop star died on June twenty-fifth.

Professor Evans had this advice for our listener.

CLEVELAND EVANS: “Well, that’s one of those things that a little bit it depends on how you spell it. I would expect a male Billy Gene to be B-I-L-L-Y G-E-N-E and a female Billie Jean would be B-I-L-L-I-E J-E-A-N.”

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VOICE ONE:

Traditionally, married women in the United States have taken their husband’s last name. But now more and more are keeping their own family name. Some add their husband’s last name at the end. Some couples even create a totally new name. But what happens when children arrive?

In some cases the child takes the mother’s surname as a middle name and the father’s name as the family name. Other times, the child may take on both names as a family name. But, this can create problems in the future.

What happens when Emma Isabella Brown Smith meets Jacob Michael Williams Jones? You see how this might be an issue.

VOICE TWO:

Unlike some countries, the United States has no laws restricting what parents can name their children. And if adults decide they want another name, they can legally have it changed.

VOICE ONE:

Parents can find plenty of advice on the Web and in bookstores about choosing a baby name. A lot has also been written about the possible effects that a name might have on a child’s future.

VOICE TWO:

There are studies that suggest children with unusual names are more likely to be teased. Other studies suggest that as adults, they might be less likely to get called for a job interview. Yet other research suggests that giving a child an unusual name might help build character.

What all this adds up to is a big responsibility for parents to consider what’s really in a name. I’m Shirley Griffith.

VOICE ONE:

And I’m Steve Ember. Archives of our programs are at voaspecialenglish.com We leave you with more of the names we found on the National Mall. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

WOMAN: “Tre is named after his father David Glenn. But he’s a third so that’s how his nickname is Tre. Kaylee, we liked that name. We adopted her and in the hospital they gave her a name of Cali which we didn’t like but we wanted to keep close to that.

WOMAN: “Caroline was a name that we liked. We found it in a baby book. And then Michael we named after my husband’s good friend and my father.”

WOMAN: “Carla Marie. This is Ashley Lyn and William David. Carla was from a friend. William was from my husband’s uncle and Ashley we just picked.”

MAN: “My mother’s was Virginia so we named after her and my wife Caty’s middle name is Allison. So we took my mother’s name and her name.

WOMAN: “He is a third so, and I didn’t like Trip or Tre, so Tres had it. I always like the name Reagan and I’m kind of a Ronald Reagan fan, so, voila, here she came along. And this one, I was skiing out in Salt Lake City and the name of a building out there was Reid — with R-E-I-D — and it sounded good at the time.”

 

source:www.voanews.com 

Thirty-two years ago in western Zimbabwe, a baby boy named Tlapi was born so sick that his parents feared he would die. They took him to sangomas, or traditional healers, and to Western-style doctors, but nothing worked. It seemed that God, not man, would decide his fate.

So when he was 1 year old, Tlapi’s parents changed his name to reflect that.

“Some people think I’m lying when I tell them my name,” said Godknows Nare, who survived to become a freelance photographer. “They think I am teasing them. But I’m not.”

Not at all. In Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, another Godknows was a waiter at a popular outdoor café. So was a man named Enough, about whom more will be said later. Across southern Africa, in fact, one can find any number of Lovemores, Tellmores, Trymores and Learnmores, along with lots of people named Justice, Honour, Trust, Gift, Energy, Knowledge and even a Zambian athlete named Jupiter.

Some Westerners chuckle. Perhaps they are oblivious - Oblivious is another Zimbabwean name, actually - to the fact that they once idolized a cowboy star named Hopalong, or that many baby girls carry the name of a jewelry store through life.

Indeed, Godknows, Enough and company are a continuation of an African tradition arguably more logical than the one that churns out excess Justins and Tiffanys. In southern Africa, a child’s name is chosen to convey a specific meaning and not, as is common in the West, the latest fashion.

Increasingly, however, those traditional names are bestowed not in Ndebele, Sotho or some other local language, but in English, the world’s lingua franca. English names arrived with colonial rule, were further imposed by missionaries and, for some, became fashionable with the spread of Western culture.

But for Godknows, Enough and others, the result can be confusion - and sometimes, hilarity - even among fellow Africans.

“Quite a few people tell me I am cursed,” said Hatred Zenenga, an editor at the main Zimbabwean government-controlled newspaper, The Herald. “They say my name is un-Christian. They tell me that I should change it to Lovewell, or some other Christian name. And others are just surprised - ‘How did you get that name?’ ”

Hatred got his name the way millions of other children here have - as a means of recording an event, a circumstance or even the weather conditions that accompanied their births.

“For instance, if it was windy, the name may be ‘Wind.’ If it was rainy, it may be ‘Rain,’ ” said Matole Motshekga, the founder of the Pretoria-based Kara Heritage Institute. “If there are problems in the family, they will use the appropriate name. So you cannot just name someone out of the blue. It has to relate to something.”

Thus a Zimbabwean baby born after years of trying may be named Tendai, which expresses thankfulness, and a child born in a time of troubles may be named Tambudzai, which literally means “no rest.” Or, just as likely these days, a baby will be named “Givethanks” or “Norest.” If a Sotho-speaking girl becomes pregnant before marriage, her unhappy parents may name the baby “Question” or “Answer” - an answer to the question of why their daughter was behaving so strangely before the pregnancy became known.

“Hatred” has its own story. Zenenga is one of seven children born to hardworking parents who were determined to educate their brood. The family’s rising status made the father’s illiterate brothers jealous. So except for the first child, who died as an infant, all the children were named to address the jealousy and other emotions that raged among the adults: Norest, Hatred, Praise, Confess, Raised-on and Abide.

For Zenenga’s parents, the names were an inside joke, a fillip in the continuing family feud.

“My father’s relatives didn’t speak English,” he said. “So he said, ‘We’re going to name our children in English so they won’t understand what we are saying to them.’ ”

Some scholars, including Motshekga, frown on the trend toward Anglicized names. “It’s an entrenchment of a loss of identity,” he said, “a joke. You say ‘I’m Wind,’ and they really make fun of the person.”

The Financial Gazette in Harare loosed an assault on the trend toward English names in a 2004 essay.

“Oh, please! Why burden our children so unnecessarily just for the sake of feeding our misguided ego?” a columnist complained. “Quite frankly, these names amount to a form of child abuse.”

Read the full article here.

Callum and Ellie were the most popular names for Derry’s new arrivals last year, according to figures just released by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.

And the figures also revealed that the Western Board Area was the only place in Northern Ireland to have traditional Irish names still feature in the top five, with Conor, Aoife, Niamh and Erin making an appearance in the local list.

Brian Barr, Derry’s Registrar of Births, Death and Marriages, said that when it came to naming their children Derry folks seemed to be turning towards more traditional names with soft Irish names remaining the most popular.

“I would say the trend is definitely not towards the modern celebrity influenced names. If anything we are seeing the names which were popular in the ‘70s coming back. We have a lot of Johns, Davids and the like. And the soft Irish names, Liam, Connor, Niamh and Aoife are growing in popularity.”

Northern Ireland wide the most popular names, for the third year running, are Katie and Jack. In second place came Grace and Matthew while Ryan and Sophie took the third spot.

The fastest growing boy’s name is Carter, followed by Rory and Aodhan and for girls Kayleigh, Lucie and Poppy are on the up. Recent celebrity baby names, such as Princess Tiaamii (Jordan and Peter Andre) and Shiloh Nouvel (Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt) have not yet been copied locally.

“We always get a few people naming children after footballers or celebrities. I don’t think that trend will go away, but it would not be the most influential thing for new parents.

“In 2007 we have already seen quite a surge in parents calling their daughters Ava, which many people believe is an Irish name. It is actually Austrian in origin, but we do have incidences of people sticking a ‘gh’ on the end of names to make them more Irish,” Mr Barr said.