Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
How the hell does name popularity work? I hear people say "When I picked that name it wasn't popular, but suddenly everybody started naming their kid that" all the time. I myself have picked at least 3 names for things I thought weren't popular, only to soon realize they were.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Do we have weird psychic cultural powers? Are there really predictable trends about which names are gonna get popular again (e.g., "last popular peak was at least 50 years ago, and was used in a x level popular fictional work in the last 5 years")? How do we all keep doing this?
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Because people don't *want* to name their kid (or fictional character or pseudonym or whatever) the next fad name and end up being this generation's Karen or Lisa, so they actively try not to, but it happens anyway! How do we all accidentally keep making the next fad?
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Samo Burja
@SamoBurja
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
1. People use much more similar generators than they might think. They use the same inspirations and methods to come up with names. 2. They ask themselves what isn't popular now rather than what won't be popular in the future.
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Anonymous
@atweeterwhotwee
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
This has the cause and effect backward. It's that among all names, one of them happens to be the next fad. It's a mathematical fact that one of the names selected must be most common. And the people who selected that name happened to have selected it.
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