Which Movies Popularized (or Tarnished) Baby Names? A Statistical Analysis
Which films impacted baby naming trends?
Intro: Life Imitating Art
In a recent post, friend of the newsletter
explored how popular music influences naming trends, examining how artists and songs like "My Sharona," Whitney Houston, and Aretha Franklin influenced thousands of baby names. Unsurprisingly, Chris found that an inescapable earworm like The Knacks' "My Sharona" can spawn a modest generational cohort of Sharonas.
His piece got me thinking about the relationship between popular films and naming trends. Can movies produce the same effect? Can a film like Forrest Gump spawn a generation of Forrests?
Movies and music differ significantly in how they present and emphasize characters. A three- to four-minute song typically focuses on a single theme or figure, repeatedly referencing the same person or concept in a condensed period. Conversely, movies feature multiple characters, subplots, and themes across their two-hour run time. The typical movie is watched once or twice, while songs can be played on a loop, sometimes to the point of sonic torture. Consider "Hey There Delilah," a ballad that says the name Delilah a sickening number of times—the sheer ubiquity of that song in 2005 left a significant cultural fingerprint and produced a massive spike in Delilahs.
Another critical difference between movies and songs is their ability to craft antiheroes. Pop music, limited by its three to four-minute duration, rarely focuses on disturbing characters. Movies, on the other hand, can portray serial killers and demons like Hannibal Lecter and Freddy Kruger. As such, films have greater potential to tarnish a moniker for decades, ruining names like "Hannibal" and "Lolita" for generations.
So today, we'll explore the films that popularized and tarnished certain names and compare their impact to that of real-world scandals and tragedies.
Which Movies Popularized a Name?
Why would a parent name their child after a movie character? What's the value of naming someone "Moana" or "Luna"? One explanation is that parents choose names that reflect aspirational traits, often taking inspiration from popular culture.
Consider Trinity from The Matrix, a strong female character equally skilled at computer hacking and kung-fu fighting. One of the film's iconic moments, and arguably one of the most memorable shots in modern cinema, features Trinity hanging mid-air, primed to kick someone in the chest, as the camera rotates around her suspended figure.
Trinity presented audiences with something novel, a powerful, independent female presence in the typically male-dominated action genre. In 1998, the year before The Matrix premiered, 557 babies were named Trinity. By 2004, this number had increased to 5,729.
It's hard to imagine a single movie moment influencing more baby names than the "bullet-time" shot of Trinity suspended mid-air.
Films that permeate the zeitgeist can deeply embed their characters in our collective memory—similar to an infectious earworm like "Hey There Delilah." 1994's Forrest Gump led to a one-year spike in children named Forrest, a testament to the sheer ubiquity of that film.
Parents wanted their kids to embody the virtue and compassion of Tom Hanks' Gump, or they simply couldn't eradicate the name from their heads—probably a bit of both.
And then there's Disney. No corporation has had a greater influence on baby naming trends than Walt Disney Entertainment. If you've had a child within the past ten years, you've probably had to reckon with the pervasiveness of Frozen—a film that launched numerous Halloween costumes, merch purchases, bad karaoke performances, and babies named Elsa.
Nearly every film featuring a Disney princess produces an immediate uptick in the popularity of that name, including Belle, Moana, and Tiana. These princesses are popular role models for their perceived resilience, demonstrating self-reliance and autonomy throughout their hero's journeys—though that's not always the case. The Little Mermaid is about a fish woman who trades her voice for legs, mainly in pursuit of a man, which is not exactly a portrait of independence. This characterization did not hamper the popularity of the name "Ariel," which spiked to over 6,000 babies in the film's immediate aftermath.
Maybe moviegoers misinterpreted Ariel's actions, or maybe "Ariel" just sounds nice. There is a possibility that some cinema-inspired baby trends are a function of phonetics rather than symbolism—hearing an unfamiliar name may be more important than the meaning attached to that character.
Indeed, indelible depictions of heroic characters can alter the trajectory of naming trends, but what about the reverse? Can a film forever ruin a name? Are there fewer Hannibals and Lolitas due to popular culture?
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Can a Movie Ruin a Name?
The subreddit r/NameNerds describes itself as "A community for those interested in names." This online forum has over 321k members and covers a wide range of topics related to baby names, such as "Are our 2 sons' names too Harry Potter-related?" and "Potential baby name unknowingly related to Nazi scientist. Help." In researching this article, I found several threads on r/NameNerds where members contemplated names tainted by popular culture. Most suggestions involved violent or overly sexualized depictions of adolescents as well as portrayals of serial killers. After all, nobody wants to name their child after a murderous or demonic movie character, right?
One of the most common names suggested in these threads was Damien, the five-year-old antichrist from 1976's The Omen. Throughout the movie, Damien is responsible for a hanging, a beheading, a miscarriage, several animal murders, and a disfigured burn victim.
Surely, no one would want to name their child after a demonic character from a movie this popular? Wrong. Babies with the name Damien actually increased immediately following The Omen's release.
Another common candidate for a name negatively influenced by popular entertainment is Regan, the possessed child from The Exorcist. Over the course of the film, Regan kills numerous people, projectile vomits while speaking in tongues, stabs her nether-region with a crucifix, says a lot of unspeakable things, and twists her head 180 degrees.
Again, surely no one would want their child associated with such depravity, fictional or factual. Again, wrong. The popularity of Regan saw a mild spike following The Exorcist's release.
Weirder yet, both "Damien" and "Regan" saw a secondary spike in popularity in the late 80s and 90s, many years after both films were released. Initial naming upticks stem from The Omen and The Exorcist’s foremost theatrical runs, but what caused the upswing decades later? I have two hypotheses regarding this second surge:
The Power of Home Video: Admittedly, this theory is a long shot, but maybe home media re-popularized these films and the reach of these characters (and their names).
Random Chance: The causes of this second spike could be utterly unrelated to popular entertainment, and I'm conjuring patterns that don't exist.
Either way, it's remarkable these names weren't permanently discontinued within our culture, given the savagery of their namesakes.
Our final cultural pariah is Lolita, a character who serves as the object of sexual obsession for a middle-aged professor. Vladimir Nabokov's novel and its subsequent film adaptation are so well-known that "Lolita" has become shorthand for pedophiliac scandal and the sexualization of a child.
I assumed there was a 0% chance that the popularity of this name would survive Nabokov's best-selling book and Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation. And yet, somehow, we see a modest uptick in children named Lolita following the film's premiere.
I legitimately could not believe this one and had to triple-check the data. But, alas, the popularity of the name Lolita peaked in the United States in 1963, which begs the inevitable question of who would do such a thing. Ultimately, there are two explanations for why names like "Regan," "Damien," and "Lolita" would experience an upswing in popularity driven by associations with problematic pop culture figures:
Some People are Sickos: Some people are sickos, embracing the depraved and macabre.
Awareness Matters, While Portrayal Does Not: The innocent explanation is that this is what happens to a relatively uncommon name that suddenly enters the public consciousness. It's less a factor of people growing fond of a fictional depiction and more so that people hear this moniker more, absorbing the word through osmosis. When it comes to names, all press is good press.
I looked into several other villainous characters—Hannibal, Draco, Freddy—and in all cases, their arrival to the zeitgeist saw an increase in naming popularity or no discernible change in trajectory. Said otherwise, I found no instance where a movie negatively impacted the popularity of a name.
This data made me wonder whether exogenous factors can tarnish names at all. Perhaps downward fluctuations in naming popularity are the product of intangible shifts and can't be traced to a singular work or person. Or maybe this only applies to fiction—maybe make-believe characters and scenarios bear limited potential for nominative destruction. If made-up scandal, villainy, and tragedy can't tarnish a name, can real-life infamy do so?
Can Real-life Infamy Tarnish a Name?
While movies cannot negatively impact a name's popularity, real-life circumstances can easily disrupt nominative trends. When it comes to current events, bad press is indeed bad press.
Isis is the name of an Egyptian goddess of healing and magic and was a relatively popular name in the United States in the early 2010s. In 2013, 500 babies were named Isis. Following the public assassination of journalist James Foley and ISIS' rise to prominence, the popularity of this name dropped significantly.
Meanwhile, a mobile-pay venture for vending machines called Isis had to rebrand.
Amazon single-handedly cursed the name Alexa after bestowing this title onto its AI companion software. They could have picked any word or even made up a word, but instead, they chose a name given to over 6,000 babies in 2015.
And then there's Monica, an unfortunate casualty of an extremely regrettable media frenzy. I was very young during the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, but it's hard to comprehend how a name's association with Monica Lewinsky could produce an effect similar to that of ISIS.
The presidential scandal and subsequent media sensation greatly hastened the moniker's decline.
What does it say about humans that Lolita somehow popularized the name of its titular figure, while a real-life human involved in a sex scandal where she is aggressively shamed by the media can instantly tank the popularity of a name? Perhaps we dissociate fictional representations from real-world relevance; we ignore despicable traits and only focus on the good. Damien and Regan are memorable characters, nothing more. But in Monica's case, the association with real-life taboos was too great for the name to endure.
Final Thoughts: What's In a Name?
My birth name is Daniel, but most people call me Danny, a moniker that has made me vulnerable to the broad cultural reach of an Irish folk song called "Danny Boy." About 1% of my conversations with strangers involve them reciting this song's lyrics, "Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling." In response, I typically nod and say, "Yup."
I am not Irish, and my parents have no connection to this song—it's just a coincidence that has morphed into an incredibly minor inconvenience. It's bizarre that names often serve as social heuristics, providing a seemingly misguided window into a person's character (often via associations with popular culture). Not every Trinity can float through the air, and not all Dannys are Irishmen who hear the pipes a'callin. Somebody made something up—be it a screenplay, song, consumer product, or terrorist organization—and these inventions forever inconvenience (or benefit) thousands of lives.
Suppose your name is Monica. In the early 90s, your name is associated with Friends, linked to a fictional and highly unrealistic depiction of a glamorous woman in her mid-20s. Then, in the late 90s, your name gets enveloped in an inescapable media frenzy and becomes vaguely connected to a scarlet letter bred out of tabloid nonsense. Then, maybe decades from now, Disney launches a new princess, and her name is Monica. Suddenly, your name is in vogue. Monica has been "brought back," and your Disney namesake sings a song that serves as an anthem for little children. All this happens even though you were given the name Monica to honor a dead relative, a namesake entirely unrelated to any pop culture shenanigans. Your parents' motivations were noble; random nonsense got in the way.
Ultimately, names are chosen with the best of intentions. The act of naming a child, and the associations with that name, are all in an attempt to provide this newborn with a better life, media be damned. This all goes to say: Don’t judge a human by their pop culture namesake (even if their name is Lolita).
Want to chat about data and statistics? Have an interesting data project? Just want to say hi? Email daniel@statsignificant.com
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