An interesting fact: the faster that a new baby name becomes popular, the faster it will die out. At least that’s the conclusion of a comprehensive study of naming patterns in both France and the U.S. by my Wharton colleague Jonah Berger and co-author Gaël Le Mens.
The econometrics of these things can be tricky, but this chart of the frequency of three names through time gives the main intuition of their result:
Here you see the adoption curves, and later abandonment, of three names that were about as popular at their peaks. Charlene‘s popularity built slowly in the first half of the 20th century, peaked around 1950, but then stayed quite popular throughout the second half of the century. But Tricia and Kristi both became popular almost overnight, only to disappear just as quickly.
In a follow-up survey, the authors found that expecting parents are less interested in giving their kids names that have caught on quickly, in part because they perceive that these names may be short-lived fads. And so abandonment patterns mirror adoption.
Armed with this study, I’m ready to make a bold prediction: there will be no more Cash in the United States in 2012. Let me explain, before I upset my friends in monetary economics. According to the Social Security Administration the name Cash has become increasingly popular; it hadn’t been in the top-1,000 list for over a century, until 2003, when it rose to 972nd. Cash has since enjoyed a rapid rise, and in 2008 it was the 253rd most popular name. If Berger and Le Mens are right, then Cash is probably not too far from disappearing back into obscurity.
O.K., names are interesting and all, but is there a broader business lesson here? I think there may be. And I’m betting that none of us will be talking about Twitter in a few years.
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Shaun G – what you probably want are classic names, which have been moderately popular for a nice long time
anyone interested in tracking baby names should definitely check out http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager which allows you to easily look at growth patterns of names. It’s a really awesome tool, actually.
There are a number of names which were very trendy and then settled in for moderate popularity, so I don’t think this finding is always right.
#4 Most hot web properties are fleeting anyway, but Twitter is especially faddish.
How many of the top websites of 1999 do we talk about today?
http://technologizer.com/2009/04/23/whatever-happened-to-the-top-15-properties-of-april-1999/
I’m not disputing the overall analysis but there may be more going on here than a trend toward perceiving meteoric baby names as simple fads.
Tricia, for example was Richard Nixon’s daughter, and the increase in popularity of the name appears to closely match Nixon’s 1968 election, and the rapid decrease with his post-Watergate downfall.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of celebrity effect behind most of the names that have a rapid increase in popularity.
Yeah, just like those Google and YouTube fads died out.
@Shaun G – check out the name voyager program to see the trends, based on census data.
It’s not quite as clear as it might be, but if you compare “Daniel” (which has been in the top 20 since the 1950s) with “Cash” (which wasn’t in the top 1000 until the 90s and is now in the 200s) it all become clearer.
Or take a look at “Judd” What a spike there!
I love that site, great interactive interface. Just watch out for the stack sizes — it’s the size of the slice that matters.
Quill,
that was my first thought: How fast did Google become popular?
and like Charles in the first comment said: businesses and technologies develop in ways names don’t
Yes, but is the area under the curve of any given name roughly a constant, modulated by mean lifespan?
This, of course, is the really important question.
Really, there are altogether too many Tricias still around.
And, related to this, how negative is the first derivative of the curve that represents per capita understanding of mathematics or much else technical, at this point in time?
This is really how one predicts the future of our economy.
This may be more about fashion than fads. Fashion in the sense that there have been a lot of fasion retailers that have come and gone over the years. But, if they are well managed and find the right market they stick around. Example: The Gap. Their market aged and they had to reinvent themselves. Not all fashion companies can do that. It’s about marketing and managing operations.
Names don’t do that. They’re purely fad – meaning there isn’t someone “controlling” the names. No one is forcing Aiden or Jake on us, where as many companies are trying to figure out how to make their brand of blue jeans more profitable. (or in the case of Twitter, their seemingly silly and useless text message format)
Twitter is new and fashionable, but if the company continues to find ways to make it sticky, it will succeed. There is a lot of marketing being done via twitter. My guess is they will figure out a way to stick around, or be bought and re-tooled as part of a larger organization.