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.