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作者：美-斯蒂芬·利维特当前章节：15407 字更新时间：2026-6-22 23:14

1. Ashley

2. Jessica

3. Amanda

4. Samantha

5. Brittany

6. Sarah

7. Kayla

8. Amber

9. Megan

10. Taylor

11. Emily

12. Nicole

13. Elizabeth

14. Heather

15. Alyssa

16. Stephanie

17. Jennifer

18. Hannah

19. Courtney

20. Rebecca

There is considerable overlap, to be sure. But keep in mind that these are the

most common names of all, and consider the size of the data set. The difference

between consecutive positions on these lists may represent several hundred or

even several thousand children. So if Brittany is number five on the low-income

list and number eighteen on the middle-income list, you can be assured that

Brittany is a decidedly low-end name. Other examples are even more

pronounced. Five names in each category don’t appear at all in the other

category’s top twenty. Here are the top five names among high-end and low-end

families, in order of their relative disparity with the other category:

Most Common High-End White Girl Names

1. Alexandra

2. Lauren

3. Katherine

4. Madison

5. Rachel

Most Common Low-End White Girl Names

1. Amber

2. Heather

3. Kayla

4. Stephanie

5. Alyssa

And for the boys:

Most Common High-End White Boy Names

1. Benjamin

2. Samuel

3. Jonathan

4. Alexander

5. Andrew

Most Common Low-End White Boy Names

1. Cody

2. Brandon

3. Anthony

4. Justin

5. Robert

Considering the relationship between income and names, and given the fact that

income and education are strongly correlated, it is not surprising to find a

similarly strong link between the parents’ level of education and the name they

give their baby. Once again drawing from the pool of most common names

among white children, here are the top picks of highly educated parents versus

those with the least education:

Most Common White Girl Names Among High-Education Parents

1. Katherine

2. Emma

3. Alexandra

4. Julia

5. Rachel

Most Common White Girl Names Among Low-Education Parents

1. Kayla

2. Amber

3. Heather

4. Brittany

5. Brianna

Most Common White Boy Names Among High-Education Parents

1. Benjamin

2. Samuel

3. Alexander

4. John

5. William

Most Common White Boy Names Among Low-Education Parents

1. Cody

2. Travis

3. Brandon

4. Justin

5. Tyler

The effect is even more pronounced when the sample is widened beyond the

most common names. Drawing from the entire California database, here are the

names that signify the most poorly educated white parents.

The Twenty White Girl Names

That Best Signify Low-Education Parents*

(Average number of years of mother’s education in parentheses)

1. Angel (11.38)

2. Heaven (11.46)

3. Misty (11.61)

4. Destiny (11.66)

5. Brenda (11.71)

6. Tabatha (11.81)

7. Bobbie (11.87)

8. Brandy (11.89)

9. Destinee (11.91)

10. Cindy (11.92)

11. Jazmine (11.94)

12. Shyanne (11.96)

13. Britany (12.05)

14. Mercedes (12.06)

15. Tiffanie (12.08)

16. Ashly (12.11)

17. Tonya (12.13)

18. Crystal (12.15)

19. Brandie (12.16)

20. Brandi (12.17)

If you or someone you love is named Cindy or Brenda and is over, say, forty, and

feels that those names did not formerly connote a low-education family, you are

right. These names, like many others, have shifted hard and fast of late. Some of

the other low-education names are obviously misspellings, whether intentional

or not, of more standard names. In most cases the standard spellings of the

names—Tabitha, Cheyenne, Tiffany, Brittany, and Jasmine—also signify low

education. But the various spellings of even one name can reveal a strong

disparity:

Ten “Jasmines” in Ascending Order of Maternal Education

(Years of mother’s education in parentheses)

1. Jazmine (11.94)

2. Jazmyne (12.08)

3. Jazzmin (12.14)

4. Jazzmine (12.16)

5. Jasmyne (12.18)

6. Jasmina (12.50)

7. Jazmyn (12.77)

8. Jasmine (12.88)

9. Jasmin (13.12)

10. Jasmyn (13.23)

Here is the list of low-education white boy names. It includes the occasional

misspelling (Micheal and Tylor), but more common is the nickname-as-proper-

name trend.

The Twenty White Boy Names

That Best Signify Low-Education Parents*

(Years of mother’s education in parentheses)

1. Ricky (11.55)

2. Joey (11.65)

3. Jessie (11.66)

4. Jimmy (11.66)

5. Billy (11.69)

6. Bobby (11.74)

7. Johnny (11.75)

8. Larry (11.80)

9. Edgar (11.81)

10. Steve (11.84)

11. Tommy (11.89)

12. Tony (11.96)

13. Micheal (11.98)

14. Ronnie (12.03)

15. Randy (12.07)

16. Jerry (12.08)

17. Tylor (12.14)

18. Terry (12.15)

19. Danny (12.17)

20. Harley (12.22)

Now for the names that signify the highest level of parental education. These

names don’t have much in common, phonetically or aesthetically, with the low-

education names. The girls’ names are in most regards diverse, though with a

fair share of literary and otherwise artful touches. A caution to prospective

parents who are shopping for a “smart” name: remember that such a name won’t

make your child smart; it will, however, give her the same name as other smart

kids—at least for a while. (For a much longer and more varied list of girls’ and

boys’ names, see p. 227)

The Twenty White Girl Names

That Best Signify High-Education Parents*

(Years of mother’s education in parentheses)

1. Lucienne (16.60)

2. Marie-Claire (16.50)

3. Glynnis (16.40)

4. Adair (16.36)

5. Meira (16.27)

6. Beatrix (16.26)

7. Clementine (16.23)

8. Philippa (16.21)

9. Aviva (16.18)

10. Flannery (16.10)

11. Rotem (16.08)

12. Oona (16.00)

13. Atara (16.00)

14. Linden (15.94)

15. Waverly (15.93)

16. Zofia (15.88)

17. Pascale (15.82)

18. Eleanora (15.80)

19. Elika (15.80)

20. Neeka (15.77)

Now for the boys’ names that are turning up these days in high-education

households. This list is particularly heavy on the Hebrew, with a noticeable trend

toward Irish traditionalism.

The Twenty White Boy Names

That Best Signify High-Education Parents*

Years of mother’s education in parentheses)

1. Dov (16.50)

2. Akiva (16.42)

3. Sander (16.29)

4. Yannick (16.20)

5. Sacha (16.18)

6. Guillaume (16.17)

7. Elon (16.16)

8. Ansel (16.14)

9. Yonah (16.14)

10. Tor (16.13)

11. Finnegan (16.13)

12. MacGregor (16.10)

13. Florian (15.94)

14. Zev (15.92)

15. Beckett (15.91)

16. Kia (15.90)

17. Ashkon (15.84)

18. Harper (15.83)

19. Sumner (15.77)

20. Calder (15.75)

If many names on the above lists were unfamiliar to you, don’t feel bad. Even

boys’ names—which have always been scarcer than girls’—have been

proliferating wildly. This means that even the most popular names today are less

popular than they used to be. Consider the ten most popular names given to

black baby boys in California in 1990 and then in 2000. The top ten in 1990

includes 3,375 babies (18.7 percent of those born that year), while the top ten in

2000 includes only 2,115 (14.6 percent of those born that year).

Most Popular White Girl Names

1980

2000

1. Jennifer

1. Emily

2. Sarah

2. Hannah

3. Melissa

3. Madison

4. Jessica

4. Sarah

5. Christina

5. Samantha

6. Amanda

6. Lauren

7. Nicole

7. Ashley

8. Michelle

8. Emma

9. Heather

9. Taylor

10. Amber

10. Megan

A single holdover: Sarah. So where do these Emilys and Emmas and Laurens all

come from? Where on earth did Madison come from? It’s easy enough to see that

new names become very popular very fast—but why?

Let’s take another look at a pair of earlier lists. Here are the most popular names

given to baby girls in the 1990s among low-income families and among families

of middle income or higher.

Most Common “High-End” White Girl Names in the 1990s

1. Alexandra

2. Lauren

3. Katherine

4. Madison

5. Rachel

Most Common “Low-End” White Girl Names in the 1990s

1. Amber

2. Heather

3. Kayla

4. Stephanie

5. Alyssa

Notice anything? You might want to compare these names with the “Most

Popular White Girl Names” list on page 199, which includes the top ten overall

names from 1980 and 2000. Lauren and Madison, two of the most popular “high-

end” names from the 1990s, made the 2000 top ten list. Amber and Heather,

meanwhile, two of the overall most popular names from 1980, are now among

the “lowend” names.

There is a clear pattern at play: once a name catches on among high-income,

highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic

ladder. Amber and Heather started out as high-end names, as did Stephanie and

Brittany. For every high-end baby named Stephanie or Brittany, another five

lower-income girls received those names within ten years.

So where do lower-end families go name-shopping? Many people assume that

naming trends are driven by celebrities. But celebrities actually have a weak

effect on baby names. As of 2000, the pop star Madonna had sold 130 million

records worldwide but hadn’t generated even the ten copycat namings—in

California, no less—required to make the master index of four thousand names

from which the sprawling list of girls’ names on page 227 was drawn. Or

considering all the Brittanys, Britneys, Brittanis, Brittanies, Brittneys, and Brittnis

you encounter these days, you might think of Britney Spears. But she is in fact a

symptom, not a cause, of the Brittany/Britney/Brittani/

Brittanie/Brittney/Brittni explosion. With the most common spelling of the

name, Brittany, at number eighteen among high-end families and number five

among low-end families, it is surely approaching its pull date. Decades earlier,

Shirley Temple was similarly a symptom of the Shirley boom, though she is often

now remembered as its cause. (It should also be noted that many girls’ names,

including Shirley, Carol, Leslie, Hilary, Renee, Stacy, and Tracy began life as

boys’ names, but girls’ names almost never cross over to boys.)

So it isn’t famous people who drive the name game. It is the family just a few

blocks over, the one with the bigger house and newer car. The kind of families

that were the first to call their daughters Amber or Heather and are now calling

them Lauren or Madison. The kind of families that used to name their sons Justin

or Brandon and are now calling them Alexander or Benjamin. Parents are

reluctant to poach a name from someone too near—family members or close

friends—but many parents, whether they realize it or not, like the sound of

names that sound “successful.”

But as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents begin to abandon

it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower-end parents may not

want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower-end parents,

meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper-end parents have broken

in.

So the implication is clear: the parents of all those Alexandras, Laurens,

Katherines, Madisons, and Rachels should not expect the cachet to last much

longer. Those names are already on their way to overexposure. Where, then, will

the new high-end names come from?

It wouldn’t be surprising to find them among the “smartest” girls’ and boys’

names in California, listed on pages 197–98, that are still fairly obscure. Granted,

some of them—Oona and Glynnis, Florian and Kia—are bound to remain

obscure. The same could be surmised of most of the Hebrew names (Rotem and

Zofia, Akiva and Zev), even though many of today’s most mainstream names

(David, Jonathan, Samuel, Benjamin, Rachel, Hannah, Sarah, Rebecca) are of

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