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Where Have All the Lisas Gone? by Jeremy at 10:36 am EDT, Jul 5, 2003
It seems perched at a precarious point from which it could, without warning, rocket into overuse. I am not so smug as to think myself immune to first-name zeitgeist. Girls' names are both more interesting to track and more vulnerable to sounding passe. Even pros are occasionally blindsided by a name, as when Trinity leapfrogged to 74 after the release of "The Matrix." A closer look finds that Trinity was already on the upswing, from 951 in 1993 to 555 five years later. Madison? No. 2? How in the name of good taste did that happen? The next big trend will be word names. Colors, for example. The tipping point came when Christie Brinkley named her daughter Sailor.
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Where Have All the Lisas Gone?
by jessica at 3:10 pm EDT, Jul 11, 2003

] Sometimes, Lieberson explains, rather than a concept,
] it's just a sound that catches hold: the ''a'' at the end
] of girls' names (Emma, Hannah, Mia, Anna), or the hard
] ''k'' at the beginning (Kylie, Kaylee, Caitlin,
] Courtney). That breakthrough sound undulates outward, in
] a kind of jazz riff, gradually mutating. So the ''djeh''
] sound in Jennifer begat Jenna and Jessica, but Jennifer
] also begat Heather and Amber, which share its suffix.
] (Before Jennifer, the only commonly used ''er'' name was
] Esther, which was never a favorite.) Those names went on
] to spawn waves of their own. African-American parents,
] who are more likely than other groups to invent names for
] their daughters -- again, less often for their sons --
] recently became enamored with ''meek'': Jameeka, Camika,
] Mikayla. (Remember the legendary three ''meeks'' of the
] Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team -- Tamika Catchings,
] Chamique Holdsclaw, Semeka Randall?)

I am taking an art class this summer. There are 7 women (no men) in the class. THREE Jessicas. The other two Jessicas are 16. Some trends never change.

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