The Top Baby Names Inspired by TV Shows Will Make You Wonder About Parents
It does seem, sometimes, like we cover the most popular baby names lists as if we’re providing commentary on a sport. But our articles are nothing compared to what the number crunchers at the online casino site ToppCasinoBonus.com have put together. And yes, you read that correctly. The Norwegian casino review site recently decided to put together lists of the least popular and most popular baby names influenced by TV shows.
Maybe all those online gamblers are also expecting or new parents (hey, we all have had to entertain ourselves in new ways during those late-night feedings), or maybe the site just realized that everyone is just as curious about baby names as they are about the best online slot machines. We can’t pretend to understand everyone on the internet, but we’re glad someone does.
For whatever the reason, ToppCasinoBonus researchers compared a list of the 50 highest-rated TV shows, according to IMDb users, with lists of the most popular baby names from the U.S. and the U.K. from 2000-2019. Then they decided that the most common names, “such as Rachel and Ross,” shouldn’t count because it would be too hard to determine whether those were actually inspired by TV shows, so they lopped off names that had 20,000 instances or more. That’s weird, because we’re pretty sure the fact that Ross had its most popular year in 2000 must have been related to Friends, but OK. Many writers use baby name lists to help them name their characters, so you also can’t know if this is correlation or causation.
A post shared by Aaron Paul (@aaronpaul) on Jul 19, 2018 at 7:32pm PDT
The results are pretty entertaining, even if the methodology strikes us as a little convoluted. The most popular baby name name that maybe probably was influenced by a TV show is Walter, as in Walter White from Breaking Bad. Based on the data, 17,423 parents thought it was a good idea to name their sweet little babies after a guy who cooks meth to support his family. We’re not sure if that’s much better than the parents who chose #3 Dexter (after the fictional serial killer), and #4 Jax (after the Sons of Anarchy gang leader). Is this a factor of parents’ sick senses of humor or a dark era in TV shows? Both, we suppose.
The characters influencing girls’ names are have some slightly more admirable characteristics: #1 is Arya from Game of Thrones), and numbers 2 and 3 are Grey’s Anatomy docs Lexie and Meredith, respectively. We’ll assume #6 Khaleesi and #11 Daenerys trended before … well, maybe the reason not to do so is a bit of a GoT spoiler.
Here are the top 10 lists for girls’ and boys’ names, just using the U.S. data:
1. Arya, Game of Thrones
2. Meredith, Grey’s Anatomy
3. Lexie, Grey’s Anatomy
4. Lyra, His Dark Materials
5. Joey, Friends
6. Khaleesi, Game of Thrones
7. Shae, Game of Thrones
8. Carmela, The Sopranos
9. Catelyn, Game of Thrones
10. Bellamy, The 100
1. Walter, Breaking Bad
2. Jax, Sons of Anarchy
3. Dexter, Dexter
4. Joey, Friends
5. Stefan, The Vampire Diaries
6. Glenn, The Walking Dead
7. Sheldon, The Big Bang Theory
8. Dwight, The Office
9. Rick, Rick and Morty
10. Creed, The Office
Head over to ToppCasinoBonus.com to see the full list — which also indicates how few parents were willing to geek out enough to give their kids the more obscure names from Vikings, Witcher, and Game of Thrones. Too bad, because it really would be great to talk to some Melisandres in a decade or two.
These celebrity parents certainly didn’t want to copy anyone with their unique baby names.
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