RECENTLY, NAMEBERRY, A website devoted to baby names – released its predictions for the top baby names they expect in the UK in 2022.
Drawing on patterns seen in “fashion-forward celebrity parents”, popular TV shows such as Bridgerton, and social trends (such as changing attitudes to a binary understanding of gender), they anticipate a spike in names such as Pixie, Bear, Regé and Blair.
Is Ireland likely to follow these trends? Thanks to the excellent CSO baby names database, it is possible to identify distinct patterns in the rise and fall of certain Irish baby names since 1964, which gives us a clue to what the future might hold.
The notions effect
It is widely believed that impressionable young parents are inclined to name their baby after a favourite celebrity – an idea famously explored in the 1990s movie Clueless where the teenage characters were all named after iconic 1970s singers like Cher, Elton John and Dionne Warwick.
This would never have happened in Ireland however, where names are more likely to drop sharply once they are directly associated with a single celebrity or fictional character.
For example, the name Lauren was on the rise and the 7th most popular girls’ name in Ireland in 1996 when the Fugees released “The Score”. The following year it dropped to 10th place and has been sinking ever since.
Olivia was one of the most popular girls’ names of the 1970s – until the release of Grease. It dropped from 4th place in 1975 to 60th place in 1978. More recently, Elsa was on a steady upward trajectory until the release of Frozen, dropping from 37 births in 2014 to 18 the following year. I could go on, but ultimately Irish parents are mortified at the thought someone might think they had the “notions” to name their child after a celebrity.
When there are a few celebrities or characters with the same name popular at the same time, like Prince Harry and Harry Potter, this rule doesn’t apply. This gives hope for Saoirse to hold steady into the 2020s.
The Scrooge McDuck effect
Much has been written about the rise of the name Fiadh in the 21st century (including by myself). But one aspect has not been given much consideration before.
Remember Scrooge McDuck’s nephews? Of course, you do – Huey, Dewey and Louis. Names that sound similar even though they are spelt differently. Their parents clearly liked the way they sounded more than what the names meant, and what’s the harm in that?
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Leah enjoyed a spike in popularity. As it waned, Mia became more popular, lurking in the top 20 girls’ names since 2009. And as Mia slowly recedes in popularity, Fiadh’s rise continues – how much of this is down to the fact that parents like a name with an -eeyah sound? Are Bea or Rhea next?
A similar pattern can be seen in boys’ names beginning with R and ending with N, with Rian, Rían, Ruan, Ruadhan and Ruadhán all rising in the 2010s as Ryan became less popular.
Noah and the rise of the unabbreviable name
Noah came out of nowhere to become one of the most popular boy’s names of the 21st century in Ireland, and while Noah Wylie was in ER when the name first appeared on the CSO list in 1996, it is unlikely that that was the reason.
What can we learn from its popularity? First of all, it rode in on an international wave of Biblical names in the late 1990s and early 2000s – Samuel, Isaac, and Elijah also spiked at this time.
Unlike those names, however, Noah doesn’t lend itself to easy abbreviation and has held its own statistically while Sam, Sammy, and Samuel are counted separately. This is probably why Jack and Conor have stayed in the top 10 for as long as they have, and partly explains the recent rise of Grace.
Global Trends
Oliver has been holding steady as the most popular boy name in England and Australia for a number of years but has only broken into the top 20 once in Ireland (in 1975) since records began. Possibly the name’s association with Cromwell is a turn-off for parents here. Either way, name trends follow a different trajectory here, most obviously with the popularity of Irish ones.
In 1990, half of the top ten girls’ names were from the Irish language (Sinéad, Ciara, Niamh, Aoife Aisling) but only one in 2020 (Fiadh). However, in 2020, four of the top ten boys’ names come from Gaeilge (Conor, Finn, Liam, Fionn) compared to two in 1990 (Shane and Seán).
But rather than jumping to the conclusion that Irish language names are rising in popularity for boys and dropping for girls, we can see that Irish parents are far more daring naming their daughters – four of 2010s top five boy names were still there 10 years later and the other, Sean/Seán only dropped out because the database started recognising fadas. There is also significantly more spelling diversity with female names – Emer/Eimear, Maeve/Medb/Medhbh, Sive/Sadbh/Sadbh which means that a phenomenon like Noah is less likely to happen.
So whatever names take off in the rest of the world, in 2022 we can expect Irish parents to recoil from anything that’s a bit too showbiz, lean towards new names that sound a little bit like the ones that were popular a few years ago and to continue to cherish names from Irish.
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