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by billyp-rva3 hours ago |
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upvoteby conductr2 hours ago|
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I have no data but feel that boys tend to get the family names and biblical names (in US anyways). It's rare to hear of a girl named Elizabeth III or Mary Junior but quite common for those concepts in boys. So I think the boy names are heavily weighted on probably the most popular ~25 or so names. Since girl names are more free to follow whatever is fashionable at the time, trends move faster.

My son is named after his grandfather, and it's an overly common name in English (American and British). Definitely a top 3 most common for last several centuries

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upvoteby macintux2 hours ago|
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> I have no data but feel that boys tend to get the family names and biblical names (in US anyways).

Curiously, in the last few months in the U.S. I've met a Tamar and an Esther, both women given family names that were drawn from the bible.

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upvoteby vforgione2 hours ago|
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Anecdata: I’m a guy and a III. My son almost was a IV but we chose another first name and used my (and my dad’s and my grandfather’s) name for his middle name. My great grandfather had a different name, but I think his dad and maybe grandfather had the same name as me.
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upvoteby 7 minutes ago|
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upvoteby conductr2 hours ago|
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I’d agree the trend is waning if that’s what you’re getting at but I think it is baked into the history of this dataset and is also still significantly more common for boys than girls

Also, IV is really quite rare for boys too. Junior still super common.

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upvoteby rightnutwingjob1 hours ago|
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Why would anyone make their kids legal name include “Junior”.

How does that work when they’re 60 with grandkids?

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upvoteby nilamo3 minutes ago|
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The Sopranos had a main cast Junior, who was also the oldest of the team. Just for some anecdata
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upvoteby thaumasiotes11 minutes ago|
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Soprano

And it's not even part of his legal name.

> How does that work when they’re 60 with grandkids?

They get called "grandpa" like everyone else with grandchildren.

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upvoteby alistairSH1 hours ago|
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Yeah, it's a bit weird...

On some forms in the US, it's listed as a suffix. Some agencies enforce it, others do not (SSA does not, for example). And colloquially, when"Senior" dies, the son often stops using "Junior" (though that's not a legal change).

UK, Can, and AUS are similar, but not exactly the same as the US. And NSW in AUS complicates matters by outright prohibiting roman numberals are Jnr/Snr suffixes. Mexico has more restrictions due to the mothers-last-name, fathers-last-name naming convention.

Personally, I dig the Nordic and Arabic "x, son of y, son of z, son of..." patterns.

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upvoteby KineticLensman51 minutes ago|
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(Brit here)

My first and middle names are John and Richard. A couple of times on trips to the US people have read my initials as 'Jr'. Very surprising the first time! Has never happened to me in the UK.

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upvoteby k12sosse1 hours ago|
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they become Jay-Are
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upvoteby georgeburdell2 hours ago|
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Not to offend, but I think it has declined because this naming of Jr, III, and so on has come to be associated with poor or rural people. For what it’s worth, I have a relative who is a IV
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upvoteby cogogo1 hours ago|
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Never heard that framing before. In New England the practice is associated with blue-blood wealth.
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upvoteby JumpCrisscross1 hours ago|
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This appears not to have been rigorously studied. Anecdotally, the further west one goes in America the higher the likelihood a suffix indicates low SES.
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upvoteby conductr1 hours ago|
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Well it’s likely the adoption by the Latinx. I think that demo grows as you move west. In Texas it’s become more common in that demo and the redneck whites. The monied still have it but more commonly go towards super preppy names like Tripp, Shep, Archer, Preston. A common theme I see if you dig deeper is they name one of the boys the mom’s maiden surname. But in general, surnames as first names is very common in this demo. I mostly exist in this demo of WASPs and my wife has I think 4+ cousins named in the mom maiden name format, I didn’t realize it was a bigger thing until we had kids and learned a lot of our friends had also done this (I thought maybe just unique to my wife’s family, but bigger trend). My family wasn’t monied so I wasn’t really exposed to it until adulthood.

Sorry to bring up race but it’s the US and the SES is too highly correlated to ignore these in a data conversation and we all do things slightly differently roughly by race/background, there’s no monoculture in the US

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upvoteby JumpCrisscross52 minutes ago|
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Eh, in my experience it’s all over the place. Scottsdale’s suffixes are largely not Latin. Instead, it probably indicates someone who sells real estate or crypto.
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upvoteby rf151 hours ago|
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coming from europe: in my experience "fancy names" are either blue blood wealth OR regular people wanting to look like blue blood wealth. So I feel you both have a point here.
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upvoteby 10 minutes ago|
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upvoteby thaumasiotes13 minutes ago|
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"Junior" might be associated with poor or rural people, but "III" and "IV" can only convey the absolute maximum level of pompousness.
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upvoteby robin_reala20 minutes ago|
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There was quite a famous Elizabeth II.
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upvoteby mbowcut21 hours ago|
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I thought girls didn't use junior, III, etc. because traditionally girls adopt their husband's last name, so they would no longer have the same full name as their mother.
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upvoteby conductr57 minutes ago|
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I hadn’t thought about that but makes me wonder if it will become more common since not taking your husbands name has become more common. I wouldn’t think so, but I’m pushing 50 and can’t think of ever meeting a female named after her mom so if it shows up at all in the data that would be interesting.

Funny enough, I think it’s common for the female middle name to be a mom/grandma/aunt name.

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upvoteby nemomarx53 minutes ago|
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Doesn't everyone do that? My brother has a grandparents name as his middle. I never thought of it as a gendered tradition

Is it a specific cultural thing I wonder

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upvoteby conductr28 minutes ago|
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Possibly. I’ve just heard it more with girls and wouldn’t expect it’s evenly common on relative basis but certainly could be wrong
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upvoteby zamadatix2 hours ago|
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It seems there are lots of cases across the board where "women adopt traditionally male thing" has become the norm in this timeframe but not many where "men adopt traditionally female thing" at quite the same rate or scale.
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upvoteby wredcoll2 hours ago|
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I think there's something to this, but also you've got to think about the cultural standards where "female" is considered "abnormal".

e.g. you have "toys" and "girl toys". "clothes" and "girl clothes" and such. It's not everywhere or everything but there is a trend.

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upvoteby smelendez1 hours ago|
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Yeah, a woman wearing pants to an office job became totally normal. A man wearing a dress or skirt would be assumed to be transitioning gender or wearing a costume.
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upvoteby setopt1 hours ago|
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Women used to be arrested for wearing pants many places, and still kept doing it until it was normal and legal. I don’t think straight men had the same motivation to push for the right to wear skirts; if they did that would be normal too.
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upvoteby rightnutwingjob1 hours ago|
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[flagged]
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upvoteby ratmice1 hours ago|
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Or bag piper
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upvoteby rightnutwingjob1 hours ago|
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> also you've got to think about

We really don’t.

And shouldn’t.

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upvoteby idiotsecant1 hours ago|
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close one, you almost had to think about something there.
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upvoteby boringg1 hours ago|
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That is the pattern. Rarely would you have a baby boy using a women's name. Broadly speaking there is a general stigma within society going the other direction then women adopting male things.
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upvoteby sandworm1011 hours ago|
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Marion Morrison was a definitive male role model.
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upvoteby dfxm1214 minutes ago|
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A baby does not "adopt" their name, though. It is given to them.
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upvoteby jmaw2 hours ago|
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> This is consistent with the observation that girl's names are more dynamic.

Interesting, I wonder what causes this? In the US, is more common to name the first son after the father. Given this data comes from US social security information, that definitely has an impact.

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upvoteby rightnutwingjob1 hours ago|
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> the same pattern held in the opposite direction.

That seems like a really awkward way to describe the observation.

Wouldn’t the “same” pattern be if the increase was due to greater uptake in the opposite sex.

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