Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA06558 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 3 Jun 2001 21:25:10 +0100 Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 11:53:37 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time) From: TJ Olney <market@cc.wwu.edu> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Children's names In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.20010603131745.00698250@agner.org> Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.33.0106031142340.227-100000@C157775-A.frndl1.wa.home.com> X-X-Sender: market@[140.160.80.17] Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Fascinating stuff.
I teach undergraduate students and have noticed marked tendencies for these
fashions. I have been able to trace some of the fashion to people who were
famous at the time my students were born, others to popular songs. One could
do this carefully in present time by doing content analysis of news and
entertainment programs and magazines as well as the and lyrics to popular
songs. In the US, I would suggest People magazine as the standard source.
For songs, it is likely that there would be a lag from the years of most
listening and "falling in love" to the time of naming. A lot of Jennifers
were born to people who were listening to Donovan's "Jennifer Juniper" when
they had their first romanitic adventures. These are my casual observations
and could be empirically tested with enough data gathering.
You could even model cycles of names, Britney for instance seems fairly
common among people the same age as Britney Spears. Will it be especially
common again in a few years?
TJ Olney
-- -- TJ Olney market@cc.wwu.edu Not all those who wander are lost. -- http://mp3.musicmatch.com/artists/artists.cgi?id=113&display=1=============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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