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HelpRe: Jack, Henry, or Oliver
in reply to a message by A Masked Man
Sure, your values probably have the most say in how you choose a name. But so do society’s values?
Popularity lists are basically summaries of which names a society prefers at any time.
So if you wanted your child to have a generally accepted name but not be one of 5 in their class you’d probably pick something ranked in say the 50s-100.
No one is going to name their child Adolf / Adolph for example because society wouldn’t find it acceptable.
(I know that’s an extreme example).
So while you can’t predict if your child would like their name or not, you can sort of guess how society would react to it and how “acceptable” it is as a name in itself perhaps?
Popularity lists are basically summaries of which names a society prefers at any time.
So if you wanted your child to have a generally accepted name but not be one of 5 in their class you’d probably pick something ranked in say the 50s-100.
No one is going to name their child Adolf / Adolph for example because society wouldn’t find it acceptable.
(I know that’s an extreme example).
So while you can’t predict if your child would like their name or not, you can sort of guess how society would react to it and how “acceptable” it is as a name in itself perhaps?
This message was edited 4/27/2020, 11:42 PM
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Yes, but how much you care about society's values, and in what way, is your own value system. So I might purposefully pick something uncommon because I want my child to have a standout name; my sister might pick something more comfortable for the opposite reason; probably neither of us would pick Adolf because the kind of societal reverberance it would have wouldn't resonate with either of our value sets.
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Popularity lists don't predict what proportion of people will like a name.
They only tell you how many, out of a random sample of kids born in 20XX, will have the name.
Like - suppose the name Liam is actually hated, or at least not cared for, by a large majority of people. The tiny minority of people, about 1 in 100 new parents of boys, who LOVE LOVE LOVE Liam, all used it. And the people who dislike it and had sons, used all the other names - anything but Liam. I don't think that's true, but maybe imagining that it were, you can see what I mean, about how popularity doesn't tell you how well-liked or acceptable a name is generally.
I think you're right that we all have a sense of what "society values" though... because our own values/tastes are just society's values, filtered through our personality and limited point of view. So I think we have an intuition about what names should be widely likeable (or not-disliked), at least within the parts of society where people have a lot in common with ourselves.
I care more about avoiding names that I suspect are *dis*liked by a variety of different kinds of people, than I care about avoiding names that are commonly found or too generally liked. Because really, 1 in 100 kids born in a given year, is not even one per classroom, and that's about the rate for the top 2 or 3 names. Yet, I still do that thing, like you say you do - I'll lose some interest in a name because I see it high on the chart!
They only tell you how many, out of a random sample of kids born in 20XX, will have the name.
Like - suppose the name Liam is actually hated, or at least not cared for, by a large majority of people. The tiny minority of people, about 1 in 100 new parents of boys, who LOVE LOVE LOVE Liam, all used it. And the people who dislike it and had sons, used all the other names - anything but Liam. I don't think that's true, but maybe imagining that it were, you can see what I mean, about how popularity doesn't tell you how well-liked or acceptable a name is generally.
I think you're right that we all have a sense of what "society values" though... because our own values/tastes are just society's values, filtered through our personality and limited point of view. So I think we have an intuition about what names should be widely likeable (or not-disliked), at least within the parts of society where people have a lot in common with ourselves.
I care more about avoiding names that I suspect are *dis*liked by a variety of different kinds of people, than I care about avoiding names that are commonly found or too generally liked. Because really, 1 in 100 kids born in a given year, is not even one per classroom, and that's about the rate for the top 2 or 3 names. Yet, I still do that thing, like you say you do - I'll lose some interest in a name because I see it high on the chart!
This message was edited 4/28/2020, 1:08 AM
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Yeah I knew my wires had crossed somewhere so to speak! I knew I’d gone off track when I used such an extreme example. That will teach me (hopefully) - trying to be coherent when I was already mentally exhausted at the end of the day lol.
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