Hi Swistle,
I was wondering if we could have a discussion about names from pop culture that we love or loathe?
Mine “loathe” is Harper, from the show The White Lotus. No opinion on the name itself, but the character Harper is ~ 40 years old. The name doesn’t appear on the Social Security database until 2004. I’m annoyed that the writers took a top 10 name that’s in the zeitgeist and slapped on a character that is old enough to have a *newborn* Harper.
My “love” comes from the Upside Down Magic books that I’m currently listening to with my daughter. Names such as Anemone and Fuchsia are particular pleasing when they hit my ear.
I would love to hear the list from you and others!
Marissa
I wanted to try to think of more examples from my own experience before posting this, but I can’t wait, I NEED to hear other people’s answers. I will add more of my own if I think of more. I KNOW I had something that was similar to the Anemone/Fuchsia example, but I cannot think of it.
I had a strongly negative reaction to a book I tried reading quite a long time ago—20 years? more? it all runs together at this point. But there was a grown woman, like FORTY OR FIFTY YEARS OLD grown woman, named Madison. And it was written in present-day-at-that-time. So it was impossible: you can tell what year the movie Splash came out by searching the Social Security Administration Beyond the Top 1000 data base for the name Madison: the movie and the name for girls both happened in 1984. The author probably thought of it as a pleasingly businesslike name with a pleasingly presidential association. But it didn’t work in the early 2000s (or whatever it was) on a woman in her 40s. (It couldn’t even work NOW on a woman in her 40s, but we’re getting there.)
I work in a library and have seen so many plot synopses on book covers where I thought “Yes, those are clearly names from your baby-name lists.” Can I think of any actual examples at the exact moment such examples would be both relevant and interesting? No I cannot.
For awhile I felt as if EVERY FEMALE PROTAGONIST IN A NOVEL was named Kate. Just, ALL of them.
I encountered the names Penelope and Genevieve in books, and thought “OH!!!” and added them to my own list. It was just as those names were coming into style, but I hadn’t realized it yet.
I am pretty sure I first fell in love with the names Cordelia and Winifred while watching the TV show Angel.
And of course I, like everyone else my age, fell for the “long feminine names with short boyish nicknames” trend after watching shows such as Who’s the Boss? and Sisters.
[Edited to add:] Back to say that I have just started reading a book that features the friendship of two women born in 1973 and named…Rose and Charlotte. Those names are not at all impossible for 1973: there were over a thousand of each born that year. And if they were sisters, I would assume their parents had old-fashioned tastes, and/or that they used family names. But, for comparison, there were 62,447 Jennifers born that year, and over 26,900 each of Amys and Michelles. The odds of a 1973 Rose and a 1973 Charlotte meeting as adults, becoming friends, bonding over all their many shared experiences, and NOT bonding over how weird it is that they were both given terrible old-lady names they hated as children and now are amazed to hear on babies EVERYWHERE are too tiny to allow for the suspension of disblief. I’m only partway through the book, though; perhaps they will do this soon.
I recently read a book, set in the present, where the adult woman (like, in her 30s or 40s, i guess?) was named Avery, and I really had a hard time getting into the book because of it. Drove me nuts. Of course, I can’t remember the name of the book….
I remember when there was an Avery on the show 30 Rock, and that bugged me. There was no way a woman in her 30s (in 2010) would have been named Avery.
I vaguely remember a kid named Avery on a TV show from either the late 80s or early 90s. I thought it was Designing Women but google does not think so.
Murphy Brown named her son Avery.
Yes, isn’t Murphy Brown’s use of the name one of the reasons that the name took off? On the show, it was an honor name for Murphy Brown’s mother Avery (played by Colleen Dewhurst until her death). And that character would have been an even older fictional female Avery.
And Colleen Dewhurst (who also played Marilla from the Anne of Gables movies) reminds me that L. M. Montgomery had a short story set in 1840 called White Magic that had a female character called Avery. I think that was the first time I ever encountered the name before I was aware of it on Murphy Brown. The story was published sometime between 1909 and 1922.
Montgomery had the best names.
Could it have been Lessons in Chemistry? I finished reading it recently and paid more attention to it since my daughters name is Avery. It was definitely an adult woman named Avery and I believe the book is supposed to be set in the 50s.
Oooh, this is a great question. The one that drove me the craziest was the character Grayson on Cougar Town— when the show premiered, the actor who played him was 39 years old (he was born in 1970). You just cannot tell me there were ANY 40yo Grayson walking around in 2010.
Yes! I finished a book last month that drove me nuts the whole time despite liking everything else about the book. Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda: 25 year old Ruby and 30 year old Harper, these people would have been born in 1990 and 1995. I could have accepted one of them, maybe Ruby was named after a grandma, but both?! They were the two main characters and it bothered me so much! They should have been named Ashley and Taylor, or something more in line with their birth years.
Some of the names from Stranger Things have perplexed me for years. One of the moms, presumably born in the mid-1940s, is named Karen, while two teenage girls, born in the late 60s, are Nancy and Barbara. Granted, I have never looked up the stats for those names for those years, and certainly they are not completely outrageous choices, but don’t they just feel wrong? Shouldn’t the mom be Nancy, and the girls be Karen, or Lisa, and, say, Amy? Winona Ryder’s character Joyce makes much more sense.
My aunt born in 1952 is Karen, so that might not be too far off, actually. I’m also pretty sure in more Scandinavian heritage families it (or Karin) has always just been a name that’s around. There’s a book (“Mama’s Bank Account”) written in the early 40’s and set as a memoir of the author’s childhood in the 1910’s and I’m 99% sure one of the kids is Kar(e/i)n. Oooh and the book “Karen” is the true story of a girl born in 1940.
Hopefully this helps at least the Karen part bug you less. :)
Karen was definitely around in the 1940s for babies. I was born in 1965 and have had several classmates with the names Nancy and Barbara (as well as Karen).
I was born in 1969 and had a classmate named Nancy. And I work with another Nancy who is just a couple years older than me.
I was curious about this, and according to the SSA data, the 1930s is the decade when Karen went from intermittently popping up in the 900s to a top 50 name! I would have guessed the 40s, perhaps because I have an aunt named Karen born in the late 40s, despite no Scandinavian heritage, as Maria points out (and she and my born-in-the-early-50s mom seem to have a lot of peers also named Karen).
Ooh, I agree with the White Lotus thing. I found the name Harper on a woman my age very jarring!
I just had this negative reaction when American Girl released its newest dolls. The new dolls are supposed to be from 1999 and their names are Nicki and Isabel. American Girl dolls are always roughly supposed to be about 10-12 years old, I think, which means these girls would have been born in the late 80s. Nicki is a good choice. I’m from that generation (just slightly older; I was 16 in 1999) and I went to school with a ton of Nikki/Nickis. But I didn’t know a single Isabel.
(I just looked it up on the SS database to confirm my feeling,and Isabel was in the 300s in the early 90s. It reached its peak popularity in 80s in 2003.) Nicole is a much better choice, as it was a Top-10 name in the late 80s/early 90s.
The names should have been Nicki and Ashley, or Nicki and Sarah, or Nicki and Brittany.
@Ashley I had the same thought when the AG release was announced. Maybe Nicki’s sister could have been Stephanie, Jessica. Melissa, or Danielle.
I know lots of Isabelles (and Isabels) my age (54) and in their 30’s and 40’s.
I recently finished a book about a family who ran a funeral home. The parents (in their late fifties or early 60s) were named Isabel and Xavier, which (same compliant as everyone else) doesn’t seem likely, although certainly not impossible. The daughters were named Florence (which wasn’t in the top 1000 for the year of her birth, but WHATEVER) and Alice. The real kicker? The son’s name was CARVER. No one ever commented on it. We were just supposed to believe that son of a funeral director Carver was never teased about his name? I don’t think the author realized but I sure did.
I’m currently reading a book with twins named Roland and Bessie, which feel like clashing styles to me. But in this case I think it was likely a deliberate choice as the kids (and their mother) are supposed to be strange and unpredictable.
I think writers could get a lot of unlikely names to work if they added a throwaway line of dialogue here and there. (“My mom wanted to name me Rose after her grandmother and my father wanted to name Isabel after his sister so they compromised and named me Rosabel.”)
That being said, sometimes the truth is stranger then fiction. When I looked up the name Juniper on find a grave, I found out that most of the Junipers who lived a hundred years ago were men, but I don’t think many people would find Juniper to be a plausible name for a World War veteran.
The one that immediately jumps to mind for me is Megan from Mad Men. For a show that did a pretty nice job with its period names (Tammy for Pete and Trudy’s baby!), that one really clangs. It’s so incongruous for someone born in the early 40s that I thought it was going to be revealed as a fake name.
Yes!!! I opened the comments specifically to vent about this one. Not only was the Megan character born in the 40s, but she was French-Canadian. I just don’t buy the name AT ALL for someone or that name/background. Apparently the character was supposed to be very minor, so I guess they just gave her a throwaway name, and then not only did she become more important on the show but they incorporated the actress’s Québécois background. They backed themselves into a corner with that one, but it was jarring on a show that was usually so attentive to period details.
Grey’s Anatomy is such an offender. I don’t find it remotely likely that there’d be adults of the ages of those characters called Addison (F) and Jackson.
And Ellis on a woman born in what, the ‘40s? Yes, Grey’s anatomy drives me crazy.
I didn’t find Ellis abnormal but I’m also from the Deep South, where surnames and typically male names are much more common for women, often the mother’s maiden name. I have an elderly female cousin named Atlas, who was named for another woman in the family. My great-grandmother and her mother also shared a strongly male name.
Nationally (including the Deep South), the name Ellis was given to 9 new baby girls in 1940, 12 new baby girls in 1945, and 6 new baby girls in 1949. It was not a common choice for girls in that decade, even in areas where surname/male names were common for women!
And Ellis was married to Thatcher! I don’t find that likely either.
I was coming here just to complain about Addison from Grey’s Anatomy. A woman in her 30s named Meredith? Wonderful! A man around 40 named Derek? Definitely. A woman around 40 named Addison? No!
All the Colleen Hoover book characters have such unbelievably unique names, it’s distracting!
I’ve never been in a group of people where all their names are: Nova, Ridge, Six, Matteo and Sky.
The plots are not fantasy.. they’re gritty new-adult romance/dramas and it’s hard to believe they all were given such “cool” names!!
I was coming to talk about her too. Ryle? Verity? Lowen? Kids named Crew, Harper and… Chastin (g)?
I have another Mad Men complaint! One of the junior employees (who’s give or take 20 years old around 1960) has a wife named Jennifer. A Jennifer born in the 40s is so unlikely! And like Andrea said, it really stood out because most of the names in that show are great.
I know a Jennifer born in 1946 and another born in 1959.
That is one of the problems when a name is very tied to a specific time. Since Jennifer became very popular in the 1980s, it seems out of place to consider anyone born before that time having the name.
When Jennifer became popular in the 80s my mom was really confused because in her time Jennifer was an old lady name. Like, everyone had a Great Aunt Jenny. I couldn’t believe that when I heard it! I guess Jennifer is more timeless than we thought.
I’m looking through the records and I think your mom might have experienced an odd localized naming anomaly! Or more likely she knew of a lot of old lady JENNYs/GINNYs, and afterward assumed incorrectly that the Jennys were short for Jennifer. But the SSA data doesn’t back up the idea of Jennifer as a timeless name in the U.S.: it’s a time-centered spike (parenthetical numbers represent #1 girl name of that year):
1880: not in database
1890: not in database
1900: not in database
1910: not in database
1920: 7 new baby baby girls named Jennifer (70982 named Mary)
1930: 17 new baby girls named Jennifer (64151 named Mary)
1940: 102 new baby girls named Jennifer (56212 named Mary)
1950: 2801 new baby girls named Jennifer (80431 named Linda)
1960: 7244 new baby girls named Jennifer (51476 named Mary)
1970: 46153 new baby girls named Jennifer (Jennifer was #1)
1980: 57371 new baby girls named Jennifer (58381 named Jessica)
1990: 22234 new baby girls named Jennifer (46481 named Jessica)
2000: 9388 new baby girls named Jennifer (25927 named Emily)
2010: 2621 new baby girls named Jennifer (22925 named Isabella)
2020: 708 new baby girls named Jennifer
Ooh. So interesting. My mom was born in 1939 so I’m guessing anyone she would’ve considered “old” would’ve been born in the late 1800s, so you’re right, the name would’ve shown up there. I wonder if she could’ve been hearing “Ginny,” or if the nickname Jenny (or something that sounds like it) might’ve been gotten from another name. She grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with lots of immigrants so there were some really very interesting names going on in her world growing up.
Also a lesson in believing everything your parents tell you when you’re a kid!!!!
Yes! The nickname Jenny was used for Jane long before Jennifer apeared, as per Behind the name.com
You can also ser ir uses by the Bronte sisters in ver novels
*see it used by the Bronte sisters in their novels
This is interesting because my mom (born 1953) also had the impression of Jennifer as an old-fashioned name before it boomed in the 70s/80s. She had an Aunt Jenny, whose name was an anglicization of whatever her German/Jewish name was originally. I wonder if it was common among some immigrant groups (who, not having been born in the US, wouldn’t be reflected in the SSA!), so maybe our moms had some geographic/cultural exposure to the name that most people didn’t!
I had a great-great-grandmother called Jennie, but it was a nickname for Jane!
My sister, Jennifer, was born in 1963, and was named for my mom’s mother, who died when my mom was 12. My mom’s mom was Zelda, nn Jenny. Really
I absolutely love the show Bob’s Burgers but have always found the kids’ names to be a bit odd for children (Tina, Eugene “Gene”, and Louise). I picture them more as Elizabeth “Eliza”, Nathaniel “Nate”, and Josephine “Josie”. Not sure why but I feel like those names suit them better! They have peers named Tammy, Darryl, and Jessica as well and they just seem too old of names for kids!
I’ve always rationalized it by assuming they are all honor names, like they’re named for an Uncle Gene or great-grandma Louise or something. Haha!
My daughter has a name that sounds a lot like Louise and she also acts a lot like Louise. My husband jokes that we subconsciously named her after Louise because we could already sense her personality from the womb.
So many. But the one that is currently irritating me is on So Help Me Todd, where there is a beautiful lawyer in her 30s named Susan. I tried making up a backstory to explain it, but it’s really distracting and takes me out of the story every time someone calls her by name.
It’s definitely uncommon, but I know a Susan in her 30s and two Su[z/s]annes in their 40s.
My favorite books for names are the Love Medicine series by Louise Erdrich. They take place in and around an Indian reservation in North Dakota throughout the 20th century. Names like Lulu, Lyman, Nestor, Eli, June, and Albertine really contribute to the sense of time and place.
Totally agree, I love these!
I like the names in Jane the Virgin. Some good modern-day Latin/US names for the Miami setting – Luisa, Rafael and his parents Emilio and Elena. Jane naming her baby Mateo ~2015 is right on trend and they had a whole discussion about the various honor names he got, which I appreciated. An Eastern European story line with Petra, Milos, Natalia, Anezka. Jane’s mom Xiomara which is fun! Also an ordinary age-appropriate Michael presumably born in the late 80s.
The movie “Kicking and Screaming” (1995) is all about the mildly depressed lives of recent college graduates who are still hanging around their campus.
One of the main characters is named “Grover” and another “Otis.” The names seem so purposefully odd for characters of their age that I was trying to figure out what the director was going for with that choice.
Great movie
I play pickleball with a bunch of “young” seniors like myself. I never minded my name Donna, but have come to really dislike hearing it as it’s so ultra ordinary that I wish I could change it. The vast majority of us who play were born in the 1950’s. There are MULTIPLE names of Donna, Susan, Nancy, Marge, Mary, Carol, Barbara, Linda and only one Bridget! I want to be Bridget!
Of course there are multiples of Steve, Bob, Rich, Mike, Ken, Dave, John, too (we have use initials). There are no names out of the many I play with that would get raised eyebrows because their names are newer than their birthyear era. (It would have been nice if our parents had thought out of the box just a little!) Born in 1954, I had a childhood friend named Julie, Julie! I wanted to be a Julie. It reminded me of Jewels and a princess name.
Loathe: Big Bang Theory! 20-somethings in the oughts (so 40ish now) are not named Penelope, Howard, Leonard, Bernadette, and Sheldon.
YES. They absolutely went “Nerds have to have been given NERD names” there!
When Jack Ryan novels got set in modern times. The young Chris Pine played the part of Jack. Jack’s wife (Kiera Knightley) was…. Kathy.
No!
If she was a Katherine or Kathleen, she would have gone by Kate, Katie, even Ryn or Lena before super-dated “Kathy”.
Movie came out in 2014, and it still bugs me.
I know one Kathy in her 30s and I have always found it really surprising. I’ve known her for over a decade and never really gotten used to it. Every other Katherine I know in that generation goes by Kate or Katie, so Kathy on a relatively young woman is pretty jarring. I can’t imagine how surprising it was when there was Kathy out on the playground with all the Jennifers, Ashleys, and Amandas.
If it makes you feel better, Jack & Cathy Ryan first showed up in the novel The Hunt for Red October, back in 1984, and were in their early 30s. They just didn’t update the names for Shadow Recruit.
I love the name Vesper, partly for the sound but also because of a heroine in a middle grade book I read long ago. The character was smart and adventurous, and if we hadn’t done family middle names I would have been tempted to use it as a middle for my daughter.
I love the name Simon, partly for Simon Tam in Firefly, but also from a handful of literary characters. Is it just me, or is Simon over-represented in literature?
The Vesper Holly series, by Lloyd Alexander! I loved those books, and they’re very hard to find now, which is a bummer because I think my daughters would enjoy them. Love the name Vesper and would never have the guts to use it on an actual child :)
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, was born 97 years ago, so while unlikely, it’s quite possible to find one over 20.
I’m never bothered by names that were rare for the era popping up in stories. After all, how many of us had a classmate or 3 with a rare name? I (born late 70s) had classmates named Guy, Edward, & Dorothy amid all the Mikes, Jennifers, and Jessicas. Susan’s popped up in my family every other generation for a century and a half.
I don’t like Martha and George for humans because I associate them so thoroughly with a pair of hippos in some old children’s books. I have a love/hate relationship with Phoebe; fell in love with it from an old Louisa May Alcott book long before Friends came out, but every time I told people that we were going to name eldest Phoebe if a girl, they said “oh like in Friends?” Got really annoying.
I fell in love with Alejandro from a Kate Elliot, Melanie Rawn, & Jennifer Robeson book, and Sandy as a boys’ nickname from Madeline L’Engle (oddly, I don’t care for Alexander), Robin as a boy’s name from The Door in the Wall, and Miles from Sesame Street
Harper Lee’s actual first name is Nelle. Harper was her middle name, named as an honor of the last name of a doctor. Harper Lee was her pen name. She went by Nelle through life.
I bet there were children named for her pen name.
Harper was her middle name though, her name was Nelle (Ellen backward, her mother was Ellen)
I know a Harper who is nearing 40 & when I first met her I thought she must’ve changed it, but no, her parents did that.
But the subject of the post is “being bothered by names that were rare for the era popping up in stories”! This is an opportunity for people who ARE bothered about it to say so, and to give examples! I think the point you probably want to make is not that it’s quite possible to find an over-20-year-old Harper (or, to better coordinate with the original comment, a 40-year-old Harper), but that it doesn’t bother you personally that it isn’t quite possible. Which is perhaps not the right comment for a post on the names that bother us, but I trust you take my meaning!
Here’s the Social Security Administration’s information on how possible it is to find examples of older Harpers:
1880: F -, M –
1890: F -, M 6
1900: F -, M 7
1910: F -, M 6
1920: F -, M 28
[1926, the year Harper Lee was born and named Nelle: F -, M 26]
1930: F -, M 21
1940: F -, M 10
1950: F -, M 12
1960 [the year To Kill a Mockingbird was published]: F -, M 6
1970: F -, M 12
1980: F 6, M 10
[1981, the year a Harper who was 40 in 2021 would have been born: F 8, M 8]
1990: F 12, M 11
2000: F 135, M 47
2010: F 2634, M 341
2020: F 8821, M 148
We went to the hospital with two names, Phoebe and June. I kept trying to convince my husband that the Friends connection wouldn’t be too strong. When we told our nurse we thought we were going with Phoebe she said “oh, like from Friends!!” and we decided to go with June instead :)
Phoebe who sang like a bird!
I was thinking about this while watching Yellowjackets last season. Most of the character names are on point for 1996 but I feel like there was a missed opportunity to have a bunch of Jennifers who are referred to by nicknames so everyone can keep them straight. Not just Jenny or Jen V and Jen C. I was in college in 96 and the Jens on my hall went by nicknames: Albee, Sunday, Loopy, Nick, etc.
Just love the name Gertie from E.T. And it makes no sense. It’s just always made me happy.
The Baby-Sitters Club names are good. Of the time but also some, that are a little different and interesting. I used to think Charlotte (one of the kids) was such an exotic name!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Who named a kid Buffy in the 1980s?
I find it easy to forgive older names on younger people in pop culture. Naming after loved ones is common, and some names take longer to fade out than you’d realize. I know a 30-something Shirley, and Nancy was top 200 til 1997. But names too young for the character are jarring, like Erin Walton in the Great Depression or a book I had as a child with a potato famine immigrant named Megan. A lot of the earlier American Girl characters were like this: Kirsten was uncommon in 1840s Sweden, and Molly, Samantha and Felicity were possible but atypical of their eras.
One of my favorite books is Summer Sisters by Judy Blume. The characters are Victoria (Vix) and Caitlin. In the story, they’re 11 in 1977, so they’d have been born in 1966. Victoria seems believable as a name in the late 60s, but Caitlin? To me the name screams 80s. I’m an 80s kid and grew up with tons of Caitlins/Kaitlyn/Katelyn. For a kid born in 1966, a name like Lisa, Linda, Nancy, Brenda, etc seems more appropriate.
My sister, born 1963, was best friends with a Caitlin in elementary school
This is suuuuper nitpicky and only something that a dyed-in-the-wool name nerd like myself would pick up on — but I’m among likeminded friends here, right?!? It always bugged me that Lorelai Gilmore on Gilmore Girls (and therefore also her grandmother, for whom she was named, and her daughter, who was named after her) spelled her name LorelAI, and not LorelEI. Lorelei is an old German name, and as far is I know, the -ei spelling is the only one in use outside the Gilmore Cinematic Universe. (I mean, probably people have named their kids after the show so it may be in use now, but not prior to 2000.) For a traditional WASPy family like the Gilmores, it is jarring that they would go for an alternative spelling!
YesI I agree! Lorelai always botherd me, too.
I love Anne Tyler’s books, but the one that came out in 2018 was set in the present day and had a 9 year old child named Cheryl. She’s a main character and I just couldn’t stop being distracted by the strangeness of it throughout the book.
It’s funny to me that these names bug us because they aren’t suited to the time, or the names were very rare at the time, but so many of us want to give our own children names that are not very popular, top 10, or even top 100 names. So Susan in her 30’s might have had a mom like me, or like you, who wanted something easy to spell, easy to pronounce, but different. :)
I think it bugs us because we think the likely explanation is that the author picked names they liked off their own baby-name list, and/or that they were oblivious to the time-stamped nature of names. The author is choosing a name as an author and not a parent, so they’re out of step with what the parents at the time of that character’s birth would have been looking for as an unusual name, if you follow me. And so they come up with a choice that’s jarring rather than unusual: Sophia when no one was choosing Sophia, even the parents looking for something unusual, most of whom ended up choosing Jessica.
It’s also jarring/irritating because, as in real life, if a person’s parents DO succeed in choosing an unusual name for the time, it invites comment—so when it DOESN’T invite comment in a book, it pulls us out of the story (and shows us the author was indeed oblivious); as other commenters have mentioned, a line or two of dialogue (“It was my mother’s maiden name”/”My mom says the book To Kill a Mockingbird is what made her want to become a lawyer” for Harper; “I’m named for my aunt”/”I know, you expected someone in their 60s, right?” for Susan) would mostly fix our complaints. (Though when an unlikely-named protagonist meets an unlikely-named love interest, then there is no fixing it without making the name weirdness the major plot arc.)
As a fiction writer myself, I do get irritated with the tendency of other contemporary authors/screenwriters to give Zeitgeisty baby names to non-baby characters. It often feels like lazy characterization, and — especially as a longtime Swistle reader — I always try extra hard to give my characters age- and period-appropriate names.
But to play devil’s advocate for a moment, I do want to point out that writers are often thinking on more than one level when it comes to naming, just as they are when it comes to language usage in general. Sometimes a character’s name has a particular significance that the writer wants to convey to the reader/viewer; either an homage to another literary work or historical figure (the best example I can think of for this is Tony Soprano’s mother Livia, whose name can only be a reference to the Roman Emperor Augustus’s domineering, homicidal wife), or a bit of word play. I think Harper from White Lotus may fall into the latter category. The character, after all, is truly a “harper” — always harping on the flaws and drawbacks of the people and situations surrounding her (even if she’s usually right!). So although the name sticks out painfully to name nerds like us, I’m sure that sophisticated storytellers like Mike White and his writing team chose it for a reason.
Does that excuse it? I usually think no, if the writer is going for realism in their work — but it’s certainly a matter of opinion, and sometimes a character name that doesn’t totally fit the reality of naming trends can provide enough thought-provoking literary value to make the weirdness worth it. If Matthew Weiner and Amy Sherman-Palladino want to make a case for Megan Calvet-Draper and Lorelai Gilmore, respectively, I am all ears! Until then … they still super bug me!!!
I knew there was a reason I could never remember Harper’s name from White Lotus and found it so jarring when I did!
I think this is close enough to the topic, but last year, my daughter had both a Rachel and a Monica in her class of second and third graders (they were not related as far as I know). Both names struck me as such “mom” names, but it wasn’t until I heard them used on the same day, I think during a field trip, that I realized it was entirely possible that one or both girls’ names were inspired by characters from Friends. I always wonder about this chicken-egg phenomenon. Were the Olivias from L&O SVU and Fringe named because the name was trending or did the name get ever more popular because it was being revived in pop culture? (My grandmother was given the name Olivia in the 1920s, so it was definitely a “grandmother” name in the early to mid 2000s, when it kept popping up on 30-something women in TV shows.)
I will also say, as a writer of period fiction, that it can be really hard to stick with the naming conventions of a given time, especially when there are always more names to choose from than were in popular use during a particular era. Jane Austen picked from a very small pool for her characters, even reusing some (e.g., Mary and Charlotte). But she and her (well-educated) contemporaries would have been familiar with many more names, from Shakespeare, classic Greek and Roman literature, the Bible, etc. They just weren’t using them.
It really makes me wonder about the trajectory of name popularity, and whether we’ll eventually reach a point when people are trying so hard to find less popular names that there won’t be any that strike us as misused in pop culture. Or maybe we’ll just keep circling back around every other generation or so to the same styles. After all Austen used the names Jane, Catherine and Anne – which, almost 300 years earlier, were the same three names shared among Henry VIII’s six wives :).
The one which has bugged me for years (maybe decades) is the British character Daphne in the TV show Frasier, saying that she went to school with a boy named Niles. Nope!
Like a PP I loved the Babysitters Club character names – they sounded so cool to my UK ears!
I was surprised at Zoey being a sister to Elizabeth and Eleanor on The West Wing. This White Lotus talk also makes me think of the sibling mismatch on Happiest Season of Harper, Sloane, and Jane.
In the new movie Otto with Tom Hanks, the neighbor girls probably 6 and 9 are named Abigail and Nova. This really bothered me because it is highly unlikely that someone who likes the classical Abigail is also going to switch course and name another child Nova or vice versa.
It was Luna not Nova but same idea.
THE OFFICE –
Not all of the names (I know some of the characters are named for the actors that play them), but Pam, Karen, Carol, Jan, Cathy??? I think this probably reflects what someone else said about the layers in naming a character, that maybe the writers wanted to indicate that these aren’t trendy, cool, of the moment people, and none of the names are THAT far off of historical usage, but cumulatively, it bugs me.
From the Jilly Cooper novels Riders, Rivals, Polo etc, I always loved the names Tab and Taggie…. and maybe this is part of the “short boyish nicknames” thing that you’ve identified that we 80s kids love. However I grew up in Australia and have never even heard of the show Sisters!
Which brings me to a potential Swistle spinoff post I would love to see, about the names in the show Better Things (on Disney Plus). The mum is Sam, and her girls are Max, Frankie and Duke; and the grandma is Phil. I want to discuss!!
Someone mentioned The Babysitter’s Club books as a love. But The Babysitter’s Club tv show didn’t work quite as well. I know they had to keep the names because of original material but 7 year old Karen just feels so wrong. Other than Claudia the rest of the names didn’t age well either.
There have been so many 30ish Harpers in movies and tv shows and it drives me crazy each time.
I watched something once that I’m totally blanking on but there was a girl in the 1960s named Caitlin and I didn’t buy it.