What is it about?
We wondered whether the name parents choose for their baby might be influenced by the environment. We noted that some baby girls are given names of spring months (April, May, June). We predicted and found that April is most popular in the southern US, where spring comes early, but that June is most popular in the northern states, where spring comes late. With regards season names, we predicted and found that Autumn would be most popular in the northeast, where autumn foliage is most colorful. Overlaying these environmental influences are cultural ones involving boom and bust cycles of popularity.
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Why is it important?
The names parents choose for their babies can be influenced by social, familial, and cultural considerations. We show that the popularity of month and season names of baby girls vary with environmental variables such as climate and seasonality. Thus, the choice of a baby's name can be influenced by the physical and biotic environments of the parents.
Perspectives
Raymond Huey is not a parent and so has never needed to choose a baby's name. Donald Miles is a parent and is experienced in a naming baby. In any case, neither has previously worked on human behavior, but both have a long-standing interest in the impacts of climate on the thermal ecology and evolution of animals -- especially of lizards. Their study emerged once they wondered why some baby girls are named April, May, or June, but not September or December. For there, predictions of geographic patterns were obvious. The immense database of baby names at the Social Security Agency made the study possible.
Raymond Huey
University of Washington
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Signatures of geography, climate and foliage on given names of baby girls, Evolutionary Human Sciences, January 2022, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2022.53.
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