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Once upon a time, baby names were a simple affair — Jane, Elizabeth, Susan.

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Eoforhild, Hrodohaidis... sigh. Once upon a time! The good old days! When everything was simple! @@

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Then, for a time, with Sunshine and Autumn and Moon Unit, they got hippiefied.

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(this Autumn is a man!)
(I know, it's no Moon Unit. Moon Bean, though!)

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Now, with news spreading over Social Security Administration data showing that in 2012 alone, nearly 150 American girls were named Khaleesi — after a character’s royal title on “Game of Thrones” — the whole name game has become downright surreal.

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omg. nearly 150? God that's so many! It's the same as the number of girls named Zoya and god knows they're EVERYWHERE.

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Also if you want to see Surreal:

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SURREAL BREAKFAST. Why are we even talking about Khaleesi when we could be talking about SURREAL BREAKFAST.

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On Wednesday, the website Vox reported on its discovery of the "Game of Thrones" baby-naming trend. After crunching the numbers, it found that the name Khaleesi had become more popular than Betsy, according to SSA data.

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...what ... a... shocker? Betsy? I think I've met one person named Betsy ever? Like... who names their kid Betsy, straight up? The Betsy I knew was named Elizabeth.

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And crunching what numbers? Like, they searched the SSA data REALLY fast? I could also tell you Khaleesi is more popular than Scout, Ophelia, Betty, Avril, Darcy, Zelda, and wildly popular Heavenly. It takes two seconds. How much do you get paid to write a Yahoo Shine article because I need to get in on this.

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On Wednesday, the website Vox reported that it was Extremely Late to the Party.

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To wit: Katniss, from the "Hunger Games” trilogy, which was among the most popular names of 2013, according to the database Nameberry

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...The most popular? Um? 146 babies born is not anywhere near "the most popular". It's like... not even in the top 1000.

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This message was edited 4/12/2014, 5:56 PM

Khaleesi is straight-up stupid, and I say this as a GoT fan. Her name isn't Khaleesi, it's Daenerys. Daenerys works much better as a name, IMO, because it's not as fluffy and dopey sounding as Khaleesi. However, I would never name my child after a character who's arc is not yet completed. You never know what might happen as the series goes on...she might go insane and start eating babies, or something. With George R.R. Martin, you never know.

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Katniss = cat piss. Horrible name. Lots of horrible names in that series. The less talked about, the better.

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I like Arya for a girl, but I think it sounds stupid for a boy.

Working at an animal shelter where calici virus is mentioned often, it makes me cringe that people are naming kids Khaleesi. Calici (pronounced the same) is a herpes virus in cats. We use a lot of pop culture names for the cats and you can bet we will never use Khaleesi! Katniss has been used (as have other Hunger Games names).

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As for as for people, I think Katniss isn't that out there to use, and the NN Kat is fairly common.

Arya is already being used in the US ... but I think it might be at least partly due to people who were born in India using it here? I've run across at least two young boys and one girl named Arya who I'm pretty sure are the children of people from India.

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Anyway, it has a trendy sound, and people might use it without even knowing about the character. Popular authors pick names that are coming into fashion, more than they create fashions, IMO. Aria is popular too, and started charting in the late 90s. Bella was already coming into fashion before the book was published. Even Cullen was! If anything, I think Twilight might have reduced the usage of Cullen... and GoT might reduce the use of Arya as much as it increases it, too.

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Samantha was used long before Bewitched... just not very much. Laura Wattenberg was exaggerating, I hope. She is a clown. Styles herself an "expert" on names, when most (all?) of what she knows is stuff you can find on the internet, and the rest is just creative statistics done on it. 150 Khaleesis does not make a headline trend of people naming their babies after GoT characters. There were 150 Chevelles and 453 Novas named in 2012 as well - does that make a trend of naming kids after 1970s Chevrolet car models? lol.

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I think Katniss and Khaleesi probably won't see any more use than Arwen or Galadriel have. eta- oh yeah Eowyn, that too.

This message was edited 4/11/2014, 11:17 AM

Khaleesi only had something like 200 people given the name, not popular in general but for a GoT original name? Yeah. Katniss is probably around the same. Bella/Isabella was already moderately popular... Isabella was already in the top 10 girl names before Twilight, after having been rising steadily since the 90s so who's to know whether or not Twilight had anything to do with its continuing popularity. It's hard to know whether a character affects name popularity when they have a "normal" name, unless there's a tremendous jump in usage. Hermione for example jumped from not even existing on the charts to the 300s by 2002, and Trinity jumped from the 500s prior to Matrix to 200s in 1999 (when the movie was released), and broke the top 100 by the following year-- those jumps clearly had to do with the character. But again, there's not knowing whether people are actually naming their kids after the character or just because they happened to hear the name and liked it. In my hometown, a few people named their daughters Eowyn following the release of LOTR, and over the years it's kept popping up in the BAs. I doubt there's that many Eowyn/LOTR stans in my hometown who love the character/story enough to name their kids after it... they likely just happen to see the name in the paper or meet a local Eowyn and think it's pretty or something.

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Anyway, I actually made a post not too long ago here about our own name tastes being influenced by pop culture: http://www.behindthename.com/bb/baby/4516399

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I've got quite a few names on PNL that I picked up from movies, tv, video games, comics, etc

This message was edited 4/11/2014, 10:59 AM

I really don't see Katniss or Khaleesi gaining that much popularity since they're quite "out there." Arya might since it's similar to established names such as Arianna.

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I feel like this has always happen though and isn't a new phenomenon. Just think of Madison after that mermaid movie or how Khloe could overtake Chloe. Thanks Kardashians. And Isn't Kayla from a soap?

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Also that comment about Samantha is totally false. I have a Samantha in my family tree born in 1812.

There may be a few kids out there named specifically after current popular book characters (/words... since Khaleesi is a title and not a name), but no more than there ever have been. The world isn't overrun with Arwens and Leias.

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I would certainly consider using a name after a book character I loved, but only if it was something that would be easy to live with and blend in well. Like Arya would be one. Not that I'd use, that I think would be easy to live with. Arya the character annoys me too much.

The article is BS. Samantha was used long before Bewitched. I forget the name of the series but there was a series of books in the late 1800's featuring a character named Samantha. We talked about it in school briefly. The one title I remember is "Samantha On the Race Problem" and the books were supposed to be social commentary.

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Katniss was made up for the Hunger Games. Samantha and Bella are not made-up names.