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But as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents begin to abandon it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower-end parents may not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower-end parents, meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper-end parents have broken in. So the implication is clear: the parents of all those Alexandras, Laurens, Katherines, Madisons, and Rachels should not expect the cachet to last much longer. Those names are already on their way to overexposure. Where, then, will the new high-end names come from? It wouldn’t be surprising to find them among the “smartest” girls’ and boys’ names in California, listed on pages 197–98, that are still fairly obscure. Granted, some of them— Oona and Glynnis, Florian and Kia—are bound to remain obscure. The same could be surmised of most of the Hebrew names (Rotem and Zofia, Akiva and Zev), even though many of today’s most mainstream names (David, Jonathan, Samuel, Benjamin, Rachel, Hannah, Sarah, Rebecca) are of course Hebrew biblical names. Aviva may be the one modern Hebrew name that is ready to break out: it’s easy to pronounce, pretty, peppy, and suitably flexible. Drawn from a pair of “smart” databases, here is a sampling of today’s high-end names. Some of them, as unlikely as it seems, are bound to become tomorrow’s mainstream names. Before you scoff, ask yourself this: do any of them seem more ridiculous than “Madison” might have seemed ten years ago? Most Popular Girl’s Names of 2015? Annika Ansley Ava Avery Aviva Clementine Eleanor Ella Emma Fiona Flannery Grace Isabel Kate Lara Linden Maeve Marie-Claire
Maya Philippa Phoebe Quinn Sophie Waverly Most Popular Boys’ Names of 2015? Aidan Aldo Anderson Ansel Asher Beckett Bennett Carter Cooper Finnegan Harper Jackson Johan Keyon Liam Maximilian McGregor Oliver Reagan Sander Sumner Will Obviously, a variety of motives are at work when parents consider a name for their child. They may want something traditional or something bohemian, something unique or something perfectly trendy. It would be an overstatement to suggest that all parents are looking—whether consciously or not—for a “smart” name or a “high-end” name. But they are all trying to signal something with a name, whether the name is Winner or Loser, Madison or Amber, Shithead or Sander, DeShawn or Jake. What the California names data suggest is that an overwhelming number of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be. The name isn’t likely to make a shard of difference. But the parents can at least feel better knowing that, from the very outset, they tried their best. EPILOGUE: Two Paths to Harvard
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FREAKONOMICS A Rogue Economist Expl
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The conversion of parenting from an
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y many journalists and found that t
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“How old are you, Steve?” he as
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irth and put the child up for adopt
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$10,000—is a mere $150. If you ea
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per year—which sounds like a lot
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greater moral plane in which man op
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there so much crime in modern socie
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off pig blood as their own. They mi
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subtle ways to inflate students’
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1423b4d4a23d24131413234123a243a2413
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followed by the same incorrect answ
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The best way to get rid of cheating
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It is true that sports and cheating
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7-7 WRESTLER’S PREDICTED WIN PERC
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Once upon a time, Feldman dreamed b
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agels cost one dollar each, cream c
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“kuklux,” a slight mangling of
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y the Ku Klux Klan. Kennedy saw the
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more lynchings of blacks between 19
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Kennedy couldn’t wait for the fir
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perfectly good year-old cars, and t
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Armed with information, experts can
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Fantastic Granite Spacious State-of
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It would be naïve to suppose that
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Elderly players, meanwhile, are vic
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terribly important. The richer a ma
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But if you can question something t
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But if you were to have spent a lit
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Just as things were looking their b
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One of the society’s aims was to
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Net monthly profit accruing to lead
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writers. But in the neighborhood wh
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could do what he did. He was a tall
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drug dealers. In the past, the blac
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Still, the very topic managed to of
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When the crime rate began falling i
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commit a crime, the incentives were
Page 79 and 80: Let’s address the second one firs
Page 81 and 82: percent. Rudolph Giuliani, however,
Page 83 and 84: The most famous gun-control law is
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Page 87 and 88: earliest years of legalized abortio
Page 89 and 90: Indeed, there are plenty of people
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Page 95 and 96: factor. Just as most people spend m
Page 97 and 98: Still, the question of how much par
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Page 101 and 102: Correlation is nothing more than a
Page 103 and 104: samples of twenty children from eac
Page 105 and 106: The child’s parents speak English
Page 107 and 108: Doesn’t: The child attended Head
Page 109 and 110: Doesn’t: The child’s parents re
Page 111 and 112: To overgeneralize a bit, the first
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Page 115 and 116: girls are given a name that is uniq
Page 117 and 118: 19. Hunter 20. Colin The Twenty “
Page 119 and 120: So does a name matter? The data sho
Page 121 and 122: 6. Sarah 7. Kayla 8. Amber 9. Megan
Page 123 and 124: 5. William Most Common White Boy Na
Page 125 and 126: 14. Ronnie (12.03) 15. Randy (12.07
Page 127 and 128: 1990 2000 1. Michael (532) 1. Isaia
Page 129: 5. Rachel Most Common “Low-End”
Page 133 and 134: The second child, now twenty-seven
Page 135 and 136: (2003); also presented in Manuel Ei
Page 137 and 138: SUPREME COURT JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRAN
Page 139 and 140: NOT AS MUCH CRIME AS THERE ACTUALLY
Page 141 and 142: papers: Cristian Pop-Eleches, “Th
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Page 145 and 146: “The Peter Sandman Risk Communica
Page 147 and 148: WILLIAM MORRIS, NÉ ZELMAN MOSES: A
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Page 171 and 172: Iraq: U.S. invasion of weapons of m
Page 173 and 174: New York Times Magazine profile on
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Social Security societal norms soci
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evasion of “sin,” withholding o
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Wade, Henry Wade, Wyn Craig Waksal,
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HarperCollins Publishers (Australia
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