Report on Baby Names

 

Image from Yahoo.com

Social Security just released the list of most popular baby names in 2008.  In the online article “Top Baby Names in the US” Yahoo reports that in the search for a popular yet unique name,

“Many [parents] turn to the Bible; others turn to TV.

Emma debuted in the top 10 in 2002, the same year that Jennifer Aniston’s character on “Friends” gave the name to her TV show baby. In the latest lineup, Emma was followed by Isabella, Emily, Madison and Ava.

“They might want to emulate the stars, but if they do, the name can’t be too far out,” said Jennifer Moss, author of “The One-in-a-Million Baby Name Book” and founder of Babynames.com.”

(Click on the picture to read the full story.)

What if parents also turn to books for a name source, i.e. Twilight?  When I read the series I thought to myself, “Why, what a nice name Isabella is, and isn’t Bella the most darling nickname?  I’d love to name my daughter that.”  Maybe the same was true with other expecting couples and the Twilight series was one of the driving factors catapulting Isabella to the number 2 girl baby name in America.

Also interesting to mention, Jacob remains the top boy name while Edward has consistently fallen since the year 2000.  Does this hint at a werewolf favoritism?  Just kidding!

Yay for literacy!

New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/books/review/100Notable-t.html

Oh how I love book lists!  Here’s one from the New York Times that can definitely come in handy for Christmas shopping.  The book titles link to the Times‘ review of that book.  (I’d tell you the books I’m getting my family but they might just see it. ;)

     A few examples: 

THE OTHER. By David Guterson. (Knopf, $24.95.) In this novel from the author of “Snow Falling on Cedars,” a schoolteacher nourishes a friendship with a privileged recluse.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: A New Verse Translation. By Simon Armitage. (Norton, $25.95.) One of the eerie, exuberant joys of Middle English poetry, in an alliterative rendering that captures the original’s drive, dialect and landscape.

THE BIG SORT: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. By Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) A journalist and a statistician see political dangers in the country’s increasing tendency to separate into solipsistic blocs.

THE DRUNKARD’S WALK: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. By Leonard Mlodinow. (Pantheon, $24.95.) This breezy crash course intersperses probabilistic mind-benders with profiles of theorists.

THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD. By Fareed Zakaria. (Norton, $25.95.) This relentlessly intelligent examination of power focuses less on American decline than on the rise of China, trailed by India.

THE WILD PLACES. By Robert Macfarlane. (Penguin, paper, $15.) Macfarlane’s unorthodox British landscapes are furrowed with human histories and haunted by literary prophets.

 

Dec 10 – Just found another list, this time from the Washington Post.  I found it on writemeg.wordpress.com