Naming in the United States
The decision was overturned in chancery court a month later and the child retained his birth name.
Ballew was fired and a disciplinary hearing was scheduled on the basis that the name change order violated Tennessee's code of Judicial Conduct.
The Office of Vital Records in California requires that names contain only the 26 alphabetical characters of the English language, plus hyphens and apostrophes.
[8] Some states (for example, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, North Carolina, Oregon) allow diacritics and some non-English letters in birth certificates and other documents.
[citation needed] There can be problems for persons with such names when moving to a state where such characters are banned and they have to renew their documents.
(Mary-Kate O'Neill → Mary Kate ONeill) Some names are spelled with a capital letter in the middle (LeVar Burton, Richard McMillan).
Historically French names such as Monique, Chantal, André, and Antoine became common within African-American culture.
The name LaKeisha is typically considered American in origin, but has elements pulled from both French and African roots.
[2][10][11] Rather uncommonly or unconventionally, some non-African Americans have given names that are usually perceived or seen as typically carried by their black compatriots.
[3] Using surnames as a first name is increasingly popular in the United States, although the origin of this practice is unclear.
Names like Riley, Parker, Cooper, Madison, Morgan, Cameron, and Harper originated as surnames.
Prior to the 1984 movie Splash, Madison was almost solely heard as a surname, with occasional usage as a masculine name.
Names like Jacob, Noah, Elijah, John, Elizabeth, Leah, and Jesús consistently rank very high.
Other popular names are inspired by religion in other ways such as Nevaeh, which is Heaven spelled backwards.
Christian, Faith, Angel, Trinity, Genesis, Jordan, Zion, and Eden are names which reference religion.
Traditionally masculine or androgynous names that are used widely for girls have a tendency to be abandoned by the parents of boys and develop an almost entirely female usage.
A study on babies born in 2004 in California found that conservatives were less likely to give their children unusual names than liberals.
Among families who had less than a college education, political leanings made no major difference in naming trends.
In contrast, high SES conservatives tended to choose common historical names.
[citation needed] Boys' names tend to be more traditional, but Liam, Aiden, Logan, Mason and Jayden are currently (as of the late 2010s) seeing a spike in popularity.
One recent trend is place names: London, Brooklyn, Sydney, Alexandria, Paris, and Phoenix are all seeing a spike in popularity as of the 2012 report by the Social Security Administration.
Names that end in an "a" like Sophia, Mia, Olivia, and Ava are also very common for baby girls.
[29] Popular names inspired by nature include Luna (moon in some Romance languages), Autumn, and Willow.
[31] It is also more common for minorities to use traditional cultural names for their children and for themselves that are obscure in the United States.
Research suggests that fewer immigrants change their names today upon moving to America than they once did.
Princeton University sociologist Douglas Massey believes that immigrants felt less pressure to change their names "during the 1970s and 1980s, as immigration became more a part of American life and the civil rights movement legitimated in-group pride as something to be cultivated".
