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It's reasonable to expect that as the % of teenage mothers falls and the % of babies born to mothers with a college education rises that things would move in the direction of preferring names which have some history in the culture -- which tends to be the main difference in tastes in names between working class parents and the college educated, with the working class preferring "brand new" names while the college educated want something revived from the past. (It doesn't have to be a name with an ancient history, though, because some of the "revival" names now popular with educated parents like Hazel were new inventions back in the late 19th century when they were first popular.)

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Also, at the moment some of the "trendiest" names have multiple spellings, which makes them way less likely to show up in the SSA list which counts every different spelling as a different name. Harper and Luna are unusual as names which almost noone every spells in a different way. Many brand new fashions, like Riley, Kehlani, Layla, Everly, Alaia, and Lainey, have a great many different spellings which are well-used.

This message was edited 5/18/2024, 11:15 AM