View Message

This is a reply within a larger thread: view the whole thread

Re: Hazel...
note: these conclusions were drawn from glancing at numbers, and I'm not too good at mathI think if it were going to be a celebrity baby name, it would have taken off already. I don't think that its going to ever break the top 100. It's at 343 now, which is a rise from last year, but... I think it might rise to the mid 200s, but not much higher.Why?Hazel is part of this generations Old Names Revived cycle. It charted for the first time in 1998, the same year that the currently twice as popular Stella hit. At that time, each name accounted for about .01% of baby girls named that year. Now, Hazel accounts for about .046% - in the last ten years, its become four times as popular. Stella accounts for about .087% - its about eight times as popular as it started out! Hazel's growth, while impressive, isn't even close.Among the "Old, but New!" names, there seem to be two kinds of names: names that never quite disappeared, and then steadily rose, like Emma. And names that rose through the charts dramatically, like Ava, which, in 1998, when Hazel debuted on the charts after its 23 year absence, literally doubled its rank in one year, going from the 600s to the 300s. (This was the year Isabella broke the top 100, too).It looks like the first wave of old/new names that hit around 1993, then a few broke through in 1998, two or three more in 2003, and just last year Camila and Charlotte broke the top 100. Weird, they seem to break the top 100 every five years. So, if things keep happening like they have, lots of the classics should be safe for the next few years.And even so, I don't think Hazel will ever get too popular. My gut just says, no, it doesn't have enough of the trendy sounds. It doesn't end in -a, it has an l but not a -la or -ly sound, and, for whatever reason, even though it was more popular than more of the other New/Old names in the early 20th century, it doesn't have any memorable namesakes (like Audrey Hepburn or Isabella the Great) or literary/movie characters (Jane Austen's "Emma"). So, it just isn't remember as well, or as fondly. So, Julia Roberts is a popular actress, but she isn't a tabloid star the same way Angelina Jolie is. People will probably kinda remember that she has a kid named Hazel, but they probably won't care too much.So, yeah. I think Hazel is relatively safe. It might rise, but it won't be Emma. Or ever Charlotte.
Archived Thread - replies disabled
vote up1

No replies