Name Blog: In Aid of Aidan -- Part V: Spelling Fashions

(The concluding episode of this particular essay. I hope future essays won't be quite this long and involved, but that's not the way to bet.)

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Why the Multiplicity of Spellings?

One of the most common complaints you hear about creativity in modern naming is, "Nobody knows how to spell any more!" And it would certainly be easy to use the explosion of spelling variants among the Aidan-rhyme names as ammunition in this campaign. But recall that when we looked into the possible origins of Braydon, for example, we found exactly the same exuberant variety of spellings. And, of course, there are even more current spellings in use than the ones that make the top 1000 names list. (In 2009 the cut-off to make the list was 194 examples for boys and 263 examples for girls.) Historically, the reasons for the variety in spelling come from several sources:

( Cut for length, tables, and images. )

Future Potential Topics

One of the really fun things about this sort of name research is that the answer to every question raises several other questions. While I can't guarantee that every interesting topic will eventually be addressed, here are some of the questions I've jotted down in the course of this article (as well as the questions that were already on my list that are cross-referenced in the discussions here).

• What's going on with the fashion for names in the B-R-(N)-(D)-(N) group?
• Is there really a "trend" for names with the format CVCVC or is this a figment of my imagination, assisted by the basic sound-rules of English?
• What's going on with Utah? Are they the secret masters of name popularity or is it just something about the Aidan-rhyme group? (Utah is evidently famous for "odd" names but most of those names don't go on to become national fads.)
• What's going on with major population centers? Time and again in the geographic-spread maps we saw California, New York, and Illinois being unusually resistant. If they aren't jumping on the same name bandwagons as their neighbors, what are they doing instead?
• Several of the comments on sections of this article brought up the topic of the influence of celebrities and popular fictional characters on name fashions. My initial research suggests this influence isn't nearly as strong as people think, but it would be an interesting topic to explore more fully.