Monday, January 06, 2003
Footballers' babies
Just released, it's that annual barometer of public good/bad taste - the top 100 babies' names of 2002.
What have post-natally-depressed women been naming their kids over the last 12 months? Jack and Chloe, mostly, it seems. The top 100 boys' names feature the usual nice safe middle-class names, like Thomas, James, Daniel and Oliver. Meanwhile most of the top 100 girls' names wouldn't have been out of place in Victorian times, like Emily, Charlotte, Molly and Eleanor.
It's fascinating to watch names rise (Lily - 62nd, 53rd, 47th, 36th, 29th) and fall (Christopher - 32nd, 38th, 42nd, 49th, 56th) over the last five years, and equally fascinating how some names barely change in popularity at all (Alexander - 19th, 19th, 21st, 20th, 19th). My name is nowhere to be seen in the list any more, despite being top 10 in the early seventies. Instead a whole new range of ridiculous first names is on the rise. I pity schoolteachers having to take the register in a few years time, trying to face a class of Alfies, Harrisons, Paiges, Baileys and Aaliyahs without laughing.
And perfectly timed for the return of Footballers Wives on ITV on Wednesday comes the disturbing news that last year 51 mothers decided to name their daughters Chardonnay. No doubt they thought they were bestowing upon their children a little bit of class, but to be honest they might just as well have named their daughter Lambrusco instead. Even more worryingly, it seems 14 mothers managed to name their daughters Chardonay by mistake - I guess a little family planing would have helped there.
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