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| Inspiration :: Caroline (painting by Caroline Ashwood) |
We often discuss names using words such as ‘vintage’, ‘modern’
or ‘frilly’ when discussing names. People often describe their style as ‘old
fashioned’, ‘arty’ or ‘unusual’. But most of these terms are highly subjective.
When researching ‘classic’ names I found everything from Waldo and Wolfgang to
Mary and Caroline and even greater number of variations on how people defined a
‘classic’ name. Some thought that all ‘old-fashioned’ names were classics and
some ‘classics’ mentioned hadn’t ever entered the top 100.
This lead me to want to devise a system of
categorising naming style. There are many quizzes you can do but they are often
based on non-naming questions, have confusing categories and have highly
subjective lists of names that ‘fit’ each category. I thought about the
elements of a name that I could measure – a similar idea to shape, colour,
texture etc. - the elements of art.
Names may first seem like a bundle of letters with the
elements of phonology (sound) and length. Then you can research the meaning,
the etymology (where the name came from and the components that make it up) and
celebrity usage or cultural connotations. The third group of elements would
look at its birth (when the name was first used), past popularity and current
popularity.
My system takes the sound and length of the name and
the past popularity of the name to create 16 main categories and 4 side
categories (which I haven’t published on the page yet) of name style. I tried
to pick elements that were easily quantifiable and that seem the main components
of peoples’ favourite names lists. I classified the names according to sound
and length and then looked at the point in which they peaked from the 1880s to the
2010s (using NameVoyager as it is the only tool to do this – even though it is
based on the American charts). The downside of it is that, in a decade, the
system will seem out of date but I am working on updating the system so that
this will not matter.
Another problem I had was naming the categories. I had
made sure that it was the same system for male and female names (unlike my
first attempts) as we continue to see gender-bending and gender-equality as
themes in today’s naming culture. I also did not want to make any category
sound more positive or negative than any other (eg. if I had used the word ‘dated’
which has a negative connotation). The popularity labels were harder. I worked
on the rule that an antique was something older than 100 years and vintage
meant that something was older than 50 years. Retro has many meanings but it
sounded much better than the ‘early modern’ label that was originally for the ‘retro’
category. The current popularity labels are not really part of the system but I
thought it would be useful for those who would prefer a more popular or less
popular name.
So if you would like to look for names that are
similar in style, visit the ‘Name Style’ page. I have sorted all of the names
from the UK top 1000 2014 and am now sorting names not in the top 1000. You
should find an explanation of the category names also.
