April. Debuted in 1939. Not so popular anymore after peaking at #23 in 1979.
Autumn. Debuted in 1969. Peaked at #64 in 2013 but holding steady since the late 1990s.
Science, 11/28/2022
Some parents name their babies after celebrities, others, for revered ancestors. But enjoyable weather can influence a parent’s choice as well, an analysis of hundreds of millions of baby names in the United States has shown. Names such as April and Autumn show up more in states where those times of year are most beautiful, the new study concludes.
The new study persuades Ruth Mace, an evolutionary anthropologist at University College London (UCL) who was not involved in the work, that “we sometimes take in our environment and reflect it in our children’s names.”
It’s long been known that family, economic, social, and cultural factors can influence given names. My sisters and I are named after my grandmother, an aunt, and a movie star. Other names are chosen for status or even for practical reasons. “It is important for a parent to be willing to repeat that name, that sound, at least 1000 times per day, and still be able to like it,” advises Paolo Barucca, a UCL physicist who was not involved in the work but has examined parents’ reasoning for baby names.
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