The Baby-Name Business is taking off as parents move away from a small selection of hyper-popular names to a broader menu of options:
Academics say there’s been a demonstrable shift in the way people name children. In 1880, Social Security Administration data show that the 10 most popular baby names were given to 41% of boys and 23% of girls. But in 2006, just 9.5% of boys and roughly 8% of girls were given one of the year’s 10 most popular names — a combined decline of about 33% from the averages in the 1990s, says Cleveland Kent Evans, an associate psychology professor at Bellevue University in Bellevue, Neb. and a past president of the American Name Society. So while a once-ubiquitous name like Mary has fallen from No. 1 during most of the 1950s to No. 84 last year, many new names are taking off. Nevaeh (heaven spelled backward) ranked No. 43 among the 1,000 most popular names in the U.S. in 2006 and Zayden, another recent creation, was given to 224 boys.