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Comment by CurtHagenlocher | Hacker News Reader

Of the seven boys I know under the age of 3, six have names ending in N: Mason, Lawson, Hudson, Colin, Callen and Quinn. And while the last one doesn't quote match the pattern as the others, that's a pretty stunning percentage.

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That is fascinating. Please don't take this the wrong way because I'm genuinely curious, but are they all white kids? I'm curious to see if this is a way for some white parents to give their children distinctively white names.

I named my son Quinn - it's a celtic name, even though neither my wife or myself can claim any such ancestry. And no, we didn't really give whether a name sounded like a particular ethnicity even the slightest thought when we named any of our kids.

We generated large lists of names and would read them off to each other. Both of us just liked the sound of Quinn - felt modern yet traditional, masculine, and so we though, unique. Unfortunately it has become the "Sean / Shawn" of this generation - gender neutral and all too common. I feel a bit like Johnny Cash and the "Boy Named Sue" where I hope he doesn't hate me as he gets older. Honestly though, in our small town there's only one other Quinn (a little girl about his same age) and everybody in town knows him because of his unique name and even more special personality. So, guess it's alright in the end.

I see. I certainly wouldn't think most parents would make conscious decision to pick more 'white' sounding name. I'm more curious about the catalyst that makes certain names take-off in popularity, and hence making them sound more attractive to parents. In your case, I wonder what caused you and your wife to feel that Quinn sounded 'modern yet traditional'.

Quinn as boy's name is uncommon, but its popularity got a nice boost in 1985 and has been on a nice uptrend.

www.babycenter.com/baby-names-quinn-462915.htm

Quinn as girl's name is a different story.

www.babycenter.com/baby-names-quinn-6865.htm

It surged in popularity some time in 2009.

pcurve - responding to your question about why we "felt" that way about the name. So interestingly enough, months after he was born I recalled that my grandparents had good friends with the last name of "Quinn." I had probably only met them once or twice when I was very young, but I have to wonder if it was some kind of subliminal thing in my case. Other people have brought up the movie / song "The Mighty Quinn" - perhaps in the case of some of these trends there is just enough subtle social hints to keep certain names alive. The 2009 increase in Quinn as a female name I'm certain had to do with the TV show "Glee."Much like one of the other commenters in this thread, I felt very odd that the name we'd picked for our son, thinking it was somewhat unique or uncommon, suddenly became part of a social trend.

ah that makes sense. Thanks for the story and explanation.

The original article points out that Jayden was especially popular among minorities in New York, so I doubt that this particular trend is particularly closely tied to race.

Yeah I was actually wondering the opposite, whether 'n' is getting more popular because it's literally more friendly to more minorities. E.g. East Asian immigrants who want to give their child a western name might look for one they can pronounce easiest -- the 'n' ending is certainly easier for some of these languages. Obviously the vast majority of these kids aren't children of immigrants but it could be a positive feedback loop that plays in n's favor.

We're not caucasian and our son's name ends in N. My sister, who just recently had a son also gave him a name that ends in N.

I see. I wasn't implying that any name that ends in "N" sounds caucasian. But when I looked at the 6 names (Mason, Lawson, Hudson, Colin, Callen and Quinn), they all sounded like names that white people are more likely to use. (again, this could be my hyper sensitive radar towards race issues, so I hope no one takes offense to it. I was just very curious to see if there was a parallel trend going on to black parents giving their children distinctively black names.

Yep, all but one are white.

Adding more anecdata...my daughter's public school class has names I can't even pronounce - not a single Jennifer, Jessica, Shawn, or Mike ala the names that were popular in my generation. The population of the school is about 40% latino/a, but those kids generally seem to have "traditional" names - Jorge, Jose, etc. It's the white kids that have the funky new age names, both boys and girls. I'd say socio-economic conditions are about the same for all ethnic groups - we live in a poor, rural community. Not sure what can be extrapolated from any of that.

Can't think of any under three in Australia that match that. The trend of the last few years has been following that cycle of rich/poor/rich/poor. e.g., names that were once royal/grand, then common and poor, now cool again like George, Alfred (Alfie), William (Billy), Edward (Eddy), etc.

Try around Elizabeth. At the very least you'll find the practice of spelling a name any way you want to be more common.

You're correct about the English name revival with Oliver going from 50th to 1st in the last decade.

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