What not to name your baby

If I were in charge of ordering personalized magnets and bicycle license plates at a souvenir shop, I’d go ahead and cut back on the inventory of “Scooter” and “Harriet” items. “Karl” with a “K” is sure to be on the outs soon too. Expecting parents considering these names should go back the drawing board. “Ashley” sounds nice. “Joshua” is a safe bet.

The Social Security Administration keeps a list of the 1000 most popular baby names for every year since 1879. In 1945, the year Harriet Miers was born, “Harriet” ranked 175th. Since 1971, “Harriet” hasn’t made it to the top 1000, so the Disney store is surely out of “Harriet” mouse ears. It’s been decades since anyone has uttered, “Harriet, we don’t put Legos up our nose.”

It’s beyond me how an adult man never outgrew the nickname “Scooter.” But then, for a president who likes to give the people around him infantile pet names, Mr. Libby fit right in. But if you’re calling your kid “Scooter,” now would be a good time to stop, for his sake.

I heard a news report of girls named “Katrina” getting a lot of flack on the playground. “Katrina” is in the top 200 for 2004, but in a few years, we may need to find new landfills to accommodate all the unsold “Katrina” key chains and mugs.

“Monica” was the 43rd most popular girl’s name in 1973, the year that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, was born. Its popularity, not surprisingly, began dropping in 1998, but still sits at 226.

While notorious figures can ruin a perfectly good name—don’t bother looking for any “Adolfs” in the phone book these days—an admired figure can boost the popularity of a name. The biggest year in the 20th century for my given name, “Martin,” was 1963, the year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington.

It’s a mystery why some names fall out of favor. Once trendy names now just sound old. “Mildred” was a top 10 name in 1925. That name dropped out of the top 1000 in the mid-80s.

Other names are so common, one jerk can’t ruin it, no matter what he does. While I’d consider a surname change if I was a “Fuhrman,” no one has shied away from naming a baby “Mark.” In the 1970s, “Richard” hardly took a hit, Nixon notwithstanding.

For the record, “Osama” has never been in the top 1000 and “Paris” dropped off the top 1000 list five years ago.