Hi! Remember us? It’s been a few months since our last post and we’re excited to be back in action. We’ve been working on something big and we can’t wait to share it with you. If you’re not already subscribed to our email list, please join so you’ll be the first to know when the news breaks.
Well, somehow it’s November and that means it’s NaNoWriMo time. Before you sit down to write your novel, be sure to look back over our tips for naming your characters and then cruise through our Names in Fiction posts for the genre that fits your project.
Those of you who adopted pandemic pups might be more interested in dog names than character names. Last month, a list of the most popular dog names around the world showed some fascinating trends. What are the most popular dog names in 2021? (We’ll give you just a second to pause and think about it…). Luna and Bella for female dogs and Max—by a large margin—for male dogs. While the article concludes that Luna and Bella show a “taste for exotic names among the world’s dog-lovers,” we know that the names people choose for their dogs is generally in line with baby naming trends. And Luna’s not the “exotic” name it once was. One of the trendier names for baby girls in the past few years, Luna has shot up the charts with outstanding speed, so it’s perhaps not surprising that Luna would reign supreme in the dog-naming world, too. The article also points out that male dogs are more likely to be given human names with no other “word” meaning than female dogs are. Similarly, male baby names tend to stay more consistent and traditional than female ones. So, what have we learned here? Dogs and humans are not so different after all and, when it comes to names, we like what we like, regardless of what we’re naming.
But for those more interested in baby names than pet names, we’ve had plenty of high-profile births recently to catch up on.
In our latest episode of “Right Name, Wrong Royal,” Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi choose Sienna for their new royal baby, a name we offered up for Meghan and Harry’s daughter. It’s a name that’s more popular in the UK than in the US but feels a bit “California,” though it was more likely chosen by this royal couple for its ties to Italy. We’ve been here before with our royal name picks when we chose August for Meghan and Harry’s son’s name, only to have Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank use it for their baby boy two years later. Now we just need more royal babies to be born so we can finally get this right!
And from royalty to the presidency, former President George W. Bush’s daughter, Barbara Bush, and her husband Craig Coyne welcome a baby girl named Cora Georgia Coyne. Cora is a beauty of a name but would’ve been less surprising in 2019 than in 2021. Predictions that the coronavirus would halt Cora’s progress up the popularity charts proved accurate. The name, which shares its first three letters with “coronavirus,” had seen a steady rise up the charts until 2019 but dropped from #71 to #88 in 2020. And we’re (sadly!) expecting to see a drop once again in 2021’s rankings. Of course we don’t yet know how the name, once poised to be an eventual top-tenner, will fare long term from the pandemic. Maybe Cora Georgia will give it a boost?
What we do know is that the pandemic has made us think a lot about what makes us comfortable and brings us joy. And this can be a perfect starting point for baby-name inspiration. So what we want to know from you is, what’s bringing you peace these days? What’s making you happy? Your answers just might inspire our next baby name list.