[Opinions] Re: I just realized, that for the first time in decades...
in reply to a message by Amandine
Are Luna and Mia international? Mia, yes, as an adjective. I haven't noticed any Luna people in South Africa, though it's hard to say in the absence of statistics. Charlotte Bronte apologised for using Shirley, which she knew only as a ln and therefore sometimes as a male given name, for her heroine in the novel with that name, but surely it must have been used for girls after that, however seldom, otherwise Shirley Temple couldn't have been Shirley and sparked off the trend.
I'd be interested to know if names like Harper etc were first used (in the US) in media, advertising, that kind of thing; or was it just Zeitgeist?
I'd be interested to know if names like Harper etc were first used (in the US) in media, advertising, that kind of thing; or was it just Zeitgeist?
Replies
This is a tangent -- but Shirley Temple did not "spark the trend" for Shirley. Shirley was already #10 in the USA in 1928, the year she was born. Her fame caused an utterly incredible spike in the name between 1934 and 1937, but there were many girl Shirleys born in the USA before she became famous.
Harper became a woman's given name in the USA because of Harper Lee, the author of the novel "To Kill A Mockingbird," which in many surveys has ended up being the #! favorite novel in the United States over the last couple of generations. When it became really popular after 2003 it had several pop culture influences that made a sort of "Hollywood feedback loop" promoting it -- first a character in the HBO series "Angels in America" (December 2003) played by Mary-Louise Parker; then a character in the Disney Channel sitcom "Wizards of Waverly Place" (2007-2011) played by Jennifer Stone; and then a major "celebrity baby" influence when David and Victoria Beckham named their daughter Harper in July 2011.
Harper became a woman's given name in the USA because of Harper Lee, the author of the novel "To Kill A Mockingbird," which in many surveys has ended up being the #! favorite novel in the United States over the last couple of generations. When it became really popular after 2003 it had several pop culture influences that made a sort of "Hollywood feedback loop" promoting it -- first a character in the HBO series "Angels in America" (December 2003) played by Mary-Louise Parker; then a character in the Disney Channel sitcom "Wizards of Waverly Place" (2007-2011) played by Jennifer Stone; and then a major "celebrity baby" influence when David and Victoria Beckham named their daughter Harper in July 2011.