Interesting... I knew baby names followed fashions, but do girl names follow fashions much more quickly than boy names? And would it also somehow be related to women's clothing fashions seeming to also change far more quickly than men's?
Interesting... I knew baby names followed fashions, but do girl names follow fashions much more quickly than boy names? And would it also somehow be related to women's clothing fashions seeming to also change far more quickly than men's?
If I were to propose a counter-hypothesis, it may seem as though boy's names are less faddish because of cultural tendencies to name children after biblical figures, of which there are many more men than women. Names like e.g. Matthew, Timothy, Benjamin are more-or-less timeless because of this (though of course they'll still wax and wane like any other), whereas people seeking girl names are relatively out of luck: you've got Mary, other Mary, um... Delilah (if you're okay with the whole "treachery" thing)... strangely Eve has never seen the same enduring popularity as Adam.
In a similar vein, it seems that boys are more prone to be named after ancestors, for which I offer the anecdotal evidence of how few women are "Juniors" compared to men. (And all of this is assuming western culture, I have no clue as to naming practices elsewhere.)
Just off the top of my head: Deborah, Esther, Leah, Rachel, Rebecca, Ruth, Sara(h)
Maybe if you just want to stick to the NT you'll be limited to Mary (and "the other Mary" has evolved into Marlene in modern times). But I'm not really sure... I grew up Jewish, so I'm not too familiar with what is and isn't in the NT.
That's like saying Jesus has never seen the same enduring popularity as Mary. Chava is a pretty conventional name.
Similarly, Eve doesn't have enduring popularity among English-speaking Christians, but that's a very different claim from saying that it hasn't seen enduring popularity.