Going back a decade or two, it seemed odd to walk past someone named after a child. If you heard someone shouting out ‘Florida!’ to find a child, you would have to stifle laughter. Now, though, as you will have noticed, children named after places are becoming more and more common. While it might be some time before you walk past a kid called New York, geography-based names are increasingly common.
Why is location naming a growing trend among parents?
There are several reasons. One is that many parents feel like they do not want to go with convention and stick with a ‘typical’ name; their kid is special, you see, and thus they should have a special name. Another reason is the growing celebrity trend of this happening. Take Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, who called their third daughter Chicago West.
People want to be like the rich and the famous, and thus they copy their style, personality, and affirmations. Now, we even copy their naming rituals and ideas. Celebrity culture has a habit of tangling people up in this kind of thinking, and it is increasingly common in naming children.
The more genuine reason for choosing this, though, comes from choosing places of importance. Just as people would often be named after famous biblical characters or people of historical repute, important destinations were quite common. This could mean naming their children after cities that have a meaning to the family or are seen as important to their culture, lifestyle, religion, etc.
What are the most common destination names for children?
Names of nations have been a common choice for a long time; indeed, studies show that up until about 2020 the nation of Israel was the common nation name for a child. Other popular choices included nations like India and Kenya. When we turn to city-based names, the most common names included places like Preston, Derby, Chester, and Florence.