Jacob and Emily topped the 2002 charts.© GettyImagesWhat's in a name? Nothing, according to a study showing that blind fate can boost some monikers to popularity and consign others to history.
The spread of names can even be explained without recourse to the 'celebrity effect', the research concludes. To those who fear a future populated by Brads and Britneys, team member Alexander Bentley of University College London says, "In many cases, names become popular by dumb luck"1
Most new parents copy existing names when naming their babies, say Bentley and his colleague Matthew Hahn of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Nonetheless, the overall distribution looks like a product of random copying, they demonstrate.
Bentley and Hahn modelled the allotment of baby names in the United States during the twentieth century. The names follow a pattern called a power law: most names are present at a very low frequency, while a small handful are very common.
Many social phenomena that arise by chance follow power laws, agrees mathematician Geoff Rodgers of Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK. He has shown how the herding behaviour of stock-market traders can make certain shares vastly more popular than the majority. "In the stock market, people don't discriminate between a good rumour and a bad one," he says.
Similar processes can give rise to fashion crazes, Rodgers adds. The microscooter, which first hit Britain's streets in 2000, was one such example. The glorified skateboard had little to recommend it over other methods of transport. But "everybody sees other people doing it, and copies them," he explains.
Random drift
To model the spread of names, Bentley and Hahn borrowed an idea from population genetics, called 'random drift'. Different genetic variants are inherited at random, and can become more or less widespread even in the absence of selection. This means that any new mutation stands a small chance of making it big in future generations.
In a computer simulation, the duo assumed that most babies are given existing names, with a few parents inventing original ones. The results closely matched the actual distribution of names.
"Some baby somewhere is being given an original name that will one day become highly popular," says Bentley. But he adds that the arbitrary nature of the process means that it's impossible to predict which new names will become common and which will fall by the wayside.
“Many social phenomena that arise by chance follow power laws”
Geoff Rodgers
Brunel University
The pair also found that the 'mutation rate' - the likelihood that a baby will be given an original name - is higher for girls than for boys. Bentley speculates that this might reflect the patriarchal nature of US society, where male names are more often passed on to the next generation.
And celebrities seem not to influence the masses as much as we might think. "I'd say it's a pretty small effect," says Hahn. Indeed, a quick look at last year's top ten charts reveals that Jacob headed the list for boys and Emily was the favourite for girls. Not a Keanu or a Kelly in sight.
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