On Monday afternoon, I was minding my own business when I was punched in the face by a tweet from Good Morning America. The top baby names of 2015 had been announced, I read, and they were just the dumbest.
Parents need to take their noses out of their dream journals and get real for one second, I thought. Esme is what every girl who wore glasses wanted to name their daughters in high school (myself included); Austin is a city; Lachlan is the non-word I made when I accidentally fell on a Scrabble board. Get real, dummies.
But upon further investigation I learned that Good Morning America had actually misreported the most popular names of the year. They had actually accidentally reported the fastest growing baby names of the year—in other words, the names that jumped the highest in cool points. Perhaps ABC News thought leading with outrageous garbage was a good way to get people to click on the article. Well, they would be right, because it worked on me.
The actual top baby names for girls are much less intentionally artsy: Charlotte, Amelia, Ava, Olivia, Cora, Eleanor, Isla, Lucy, Evelyn, and Penelope. For boys, they are still dumb: Ezra, Asher, Atticus, Declan, Oliver, Silas, Milo, Jude, Henry, Jasper.
Suddenly everyone is a celebrity and their baby’s birth certificate is their creative outlet, I guess!
…Wow, funny, I was just visited by the ghost of Christmas future. She visited long enough to give me the list of most popular baby names in 2050 and then punched me in the face and flew away. It turns out in 2050 there is just one master list of top baby names because gender is meaningless and so are words. The top ten are Rose Gold, Dunk, Tar, Matchbox, Dorth Vade, Catfish, Gelatin, Handrail, Mothra and Spork. Now at least you know what you’re working toward.
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Image via Vasilyev Alexandr/Shutterstock.
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
