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ArchivesMagenta - A real name?
My friend and I are having a rather heated debate about the, I suppose you could call it legitimacy, of this name. Is it an actual modern-English name or something Hollywood producers invented to add an heir of uniqueness to their characters?
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Magenta is a color: purplish pink, on the dark side. Very saturated, cool, and pretty.
I've never heard it used as a name, but there's no reason why you can't.
I've never heard it used as a name, but there's no reason why you can't.
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If you check out the following website you will see that there were girls named Magenta born in the state of Oregon in both 1988 and 1996. Though it's rare, I have seen other examples.
http://www.dhs.state.or.us/publichealth/chs/babyname/babyname.cfm
Of course almost any name that's been featured in a popular film will have at least one real child with it somewhere, though they may have been born after the film was released and have been inspired by it. :)
http://www.dhs.state.or.us/publichealth/chs/babyname/babyname.cfm
Of course almost any name that's been featured in a popular film will have at least one real child with it somewhere, though they may have been born after the film was released and have been inspired by it. :)
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This is how future popular names are predicted: looking at the names in very popular movied and the names of children of actors and actresses.
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Maybe so ... but the actors must get them from somewhere. Perhaps they are just more attuned than the rest of us to how the broader public might be 'thinking', though the 'thoughts' would still be unconscious. They depend for their living on being on the public's wavelength, after all. Interesting!
Interesting also to consider the usual paradigm: that leaders in society start using a name, let's say Przml, and people who admire them and aspire to their position learn the name Przml from them ... and so on down the social ladder until the social leaders notice too many little Przmls for comfort and drop it. Thus it sinks to become a truly well-used, popular name while those who started the process are now naming their children Wgrrq.
Does the same, or similar, happen with actor-family names? Or do people identify Actor A, whether from personality or usual roles, as posh and Actor B as underclass ... so Proudly Underclass parents might follow B's lead and Aspiring Upperclass parents might copy A? And is there any way, other than the notoriously inaccurate personal testimony, of finding out?
Interesting also to consider the usual paradigm: that leaders in society start using a name, let's say Przml, and people who admire them and aspire to their position learn the name Przml from them ... and so on down the social ladder until the social leaders notice too many little Przmls for comfort and drop it. Thus it sinks to become a truly well-used, popular name while those who started the process are now naming their children Wgrrq.
Does the same, or similar, happen with actor-family names? Or do people identify Actor A, whether from personality or usual roles, as posh and Actor B as underclass ... so Proudly Underclass parents might follow B's lead and Aspiring Upperclass parents might copy A? And is there any way, other than the notoriously inaccurate personal testimony, of finding out?
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The question "Is X a real name?" comes up for me rather often when I try to find new names for my own database of given names. Here is the little "trick" that I use to decide this: I take the name in question, combine it with the most popular family names and do searches in Google using "" around the whole expression because I am only interested in pages where X and the family name stand side by side, so that I can assume that there is an actual, real person mentioned.
So, for a check "Is Magenta used in the US as a given name?" I go to Google and search for:
"Magenta Smith"
"Magenta Johnson"
"Magenta Williams"
"Magenta Jones"
and so on.
When I did this just before posting for every such search a few dozen hits turned up which I would interpret as: Yes, Magenta is used as a given name in the US, but very rarely - with a common name there would be at least hundreds of hits.
Rene www.AboutNames.ch
So, for a check "Is Magenta used in the US as a given name?" I go to Google and search for:
"Magenta Smith"
"Magenta Johnson"
"Magenta Williams"
"Magenta Jones"
and so on.
When I did this just before posting for every such search a few dozen hits turned up which I would interpret as: Yes, Magenta is used as a given name in the US, but very rarely - with a common name there would be at least hundreds of hits.
Rene www.AboutNames.ch
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A lot of colors have been used as names before. I've actually heard of people considering this name in the past. I didn't know that it was a Hollywood character name.
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