Parents are Naming their Babies after Instagram Filters. Forget about “Emily,” “Rose,” “John” or “Martin.” American parents are not choosing traditional names for their newborn babies. Well, not all, but a lot of them are doing this. Traditional names don’t seem to suit them. Can you guess what they base their choices on? If you said Instagram, you’re pretty right.
Parents are Naming their Babies after Instagram Filters
Every year, the American site BabyCenter has issued a survey to 340,000 users
The question was “How is your baby called?”, their baby being born this year, 2015. They got pretty surprised when they knew that life-long, classic names were receding (“Sophia” and “Jackson” are the most popular this year) while an increasing number of American youths were being named after Instagram filters. According to the site, names like “Juno,” “Ludwig,” Amaro” or “Valencia” have seen an important popularity increase in between 2014 and 2015. The most impressive case is that of “Lux” (which happens to be “Light” in Latin and is not a filter but the name of a light-regulating Instagram tool), which has experienced a rise of 75%.
However, like every success concerning anything, this trend is to be relativized. While they are in fact increasing in number, the seven numbers that BabyCenter has identified as homages to Instagram are not amongst the 100 most popular names for babies in 2015. Moreover, the site remembers, popular culture has had an effect on naming customs since many years ago. In 2014, like the Disney movie “Frozen” (Frozen), names such as Elsa or Sven were very popular. Celebrities play an important role, too. How many Maximas will we see in the coming months now that Mark Zuckerberg – creator of Facebook and owner of Instagram – has decided to call his daughter like that? Probably a lot.
