What’s In A Name? Ask
An Adolph
Common Monikers on the Way Out
Thanks to No Fly List

When I was a freshman at the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education in Fairhope, Alabama, my best friend was a guy in my class named Mike LaPlace. We were both learning how to play guitar and we would spend our lunch breaks on the quad trying to master new chords while hoping to catch the eye of the pretty girls in our school such as Roxanne Moore and Pagan Lee.

Mike’s mom and step-dad lived in nearby Spanish Fort while his father and older brothers lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I got to meet Mike’s dad that Thanksgiving when we traveled to Baton Rouge to see the Who play at LSU. It was a fantastic concert, although I distinctly remember the LSU crowd being a little rough on the opening act, the reggae band Toots and the Maytals.

Medusa was once a very popular name for baby girls. Then a mean Gorgon with that name ruined it for everyone. Painting of Medusa by Peter Paul Rubens.

Mike’s dad’s name was Ad, which I found a little strange. When I had the opportunity to ask him about it, Mike told me his dad’s full name was Adolph LaPlace but everyone had called him Ad since he was a little kid.

Yes, it turns out that Mike’s dad was born in the last few years of American Adolphs. At one time it was a fairly popular name for American boys, particular if your family came from European stock. Then a single Adolph in Germany ruined it for everybody.

I imagine every generation has a name or two that falls off the charts due to bad behavior on the part of a particular namesake. After November 1963 I doubt that too many parents looked down in the bassinet and said, “We’re going to name you Lee Harvey.”

Evidently it doesn’t even have to be a person that besmirches the name for everyone else. In 2006, the name Katrina fell out of the Top 500 names for newborn American girls despite having been in the Top 100 before that. And don’t even look for the names Osama or Saddam in the list of Top 500 American baby boy names.

Normally, baby names follow a gentle curve of increased popularity before slowly falling out of fashion. For example, my name Jeffrey was the 14th most popular name for boys in 1960 when I was born. It stayed in the top twenty until 1978 when I graduated from high school. Since then, the name has fallen on hard times and was ranked #180 in 2006.

Why the drop in Jeff popularity? My own theory is that it is because there are no Jeffs in the Bible, the current source of popular baby names, particularly for boys. Of the top ten baby names for boys born in 2006, William is the only one not derived from the Bible. Of course, this biblical trend has done little for the names Festus, Ebenezer and Nimrod.

The fastest rising star on the list of baby boy names in 2006 was Landon, which moved up 19 places (as Billboard Magazine would say “with a bullet.”), while Julian dropped 17 spots to #95.

Movement on the girls’ side was even more dramatic with Addison up 57 places, Camryn up 30 places, and Claire up 20 places. Feminine names falling out of fashion last year include Makayla (down 29 spots) and Bailey (down 25).

New names for boys in the top 100 include Peyton, Miles and Brody, indicating that parents want their sons to be NFL quarterbacks, jazz trumpeters or Oscar-winning actors.

New names for baby girls in the 2006 top 100 include Juliana, Maggie, Aubrey (my paternal grandfather’s name), and Nevaeh. If you are wondering about the origin of Nevaeh, it is a totally made up name that means “heaven spelled backwards.”

A lot of parents give their kids an original spelling of a common name so that they will stand out in the crowd (and have to spell out their names to teachers, coaches and business associates for the rest of their natural lives). According to The Baby Center, the name Caden had the most spelling variations among boys’ names with 32 and Mackenzie topped the girls’ list with an astounding 45 different variations including Makynzye and Makenzee.

Why do American parents feel the need to get so creative with their babies’ names? Well, one reason might be to get them on airplanes easier. From September 2001 to March 2006, the FBI/FAA’s “No Fly” list of names grew from 16 names to 44,000 names. People with those particlar names are routinely pulled aside at airports until authorities can determine whether or not they are a terrorist threat. That shouldn’t inconvenience those Americans too much…unless perhaps they are on a tight schedule and have a plane to catch.

What’s truly scary about the No Fly list is how common some of the names are. Among the names found on the list are David Nelson, Robert Johnson, Gary Smith, John Williams, Don Young and Daniel Brown. I’ve known at least one person with each of these names and at least four Robert Johnsons in my life.

Another scary aspect of this humongous list is that so many “false positives” are made at airports that you would have to assume that it takes away valuable security resources from more effective anti-terrorist techniques.

Among the people pulled out of airport lines across America for having the wrong name at the wrong time: U.S. Representative Don Young (R-AK), the 3rd most senior Republican in the House, Daniel Brown, a U.S. Marine returning from Iraq with his entire company, actor David Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and many children under the age of five.

So the lesson here is obvious: If you have a baby in the United States, you might want to peruse the old FBI/FAA No Fly list before giving little he or she a name. And whatever you do, don’t name your baby boy Cat Stevens.