Geeky Chic

First, a completely random thought:  I wish that my office had one of those cafeteria milk
dispensers.  It would really help mid-afternoon brownie breaks.

**

Back when I was a high school prepster, the Burberry plaid scarf meant
something.  It was the garment that most represented the East
Coast boarding school establishment, and it was scarce in and
inpractical  for San Francisco (it was mainly spotted on Japanese
tourists during these years).  Then in 2001-2002, after a few
years of growing momentum, the  scarf “took off” and became the
trophy item of the masses and the bling bling set, thus, destroying its
once exclusive aura.

It appears that baby names undergo this same process.  Certain names are popular with the upper-middle class in year 1, but within 5-10 years, they trickle down to mass popularity. 
For instance, during the 1990s, in California, Madison and Lauren, were
in the top-5 for upper-middle class names.  By 2000, these names
reached spots 3 and 6 respectively on the most popular overall
chart.  Hence, around the time when new parents everywhere started
swathing their new babies in Burberry-patterned bunting, they bestowed
upon them the Burberry equivalent of names.

Let’s hope that little Greta’s name is safe.  When I was compiling
a list for our pater familias, it came up as 705 in overall
popularity  for 2003 in the Social Security Adminstration database.  But it is trending upwards (it was only 845 in 1999).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 12th, 2005 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Legalese. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.