In looking over the names new to the SSA top 1000 list for boys this year, I was surprised to see "
Eden" making the boys' top 1000 for the first time.
Eden has normally been a female name in the USA for the last couple of generations. First thinking of it with the English pronunciation of the Biblical place name, I couldn't figure out why parents would have suddenly started giving it to boys.
But then it dawned on me that
perhaps this is a Hispanic-American respelling of
Aidan! Hispanic parents in the USA often respell
Brian and
Ryan as Brayan and Rayan because those spellings are what yield the English "I" sound in Latin American Spanish. So maybe
Eden is what would yield the English pronunciation of
Aidan in Spanish?
So, Spanish speakers, does that make sense? Would the spelling "
Eden" sound like the English "
Aidan" in the Spanish accent of most Latin American immigrants to the USA?