- Gary, we need to talk about your name.
Listen Gar, you know all
those baby name sites,
obsessively tracking
the popularity of names?
Well it would seem that
the Knoxes, the Zumas,
and the Noahs, and the Liams have
knocked you off the list.
In fact, your name is going extinct.
In 2013, just 450 new Garys
were minted in the US,
while only 28 squeaked
by in England and Wales.
Compare that to your heyday in the 50s
in the US when your name was the
10th most popular moniker, and in
the 60s in the UK when 38,000 of you
rolled off the baby
assembly line per year.
The name Gary even jumped the gender line.
Here's the thing, the public is prone to
suggestion, and you need another champion,
a Gary Cooper to get into
the collective consciousness.
Gary the Snail from Spongebob Squarepants
can't do it alone.
Gary Shandling, and Gary Oldman are
too flush with success to care,
and Gary Powell, the
Apple employee who lost
the next generation iPhone prototype
isn't doing you any favors.
If you doubt the fickle
nature of the naming
public, consider that this year,
the names Willow, Valencia, and Juno
rose in popularity for girls names,
and Ludwig, Amaro, and Kelvin moved
up the chart for boys.
The thing they all have in common?
They're Instragram filters.
Jonah Berger, the author of Contagious,
Why Things Catch On, found more examples
of our capricious naming habits.
Quote, "Names that begin
with K increased 9%
after Hurricane Katrina in 2005,
and names that start with A were 7% more
common after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Not a huge bump, but worth considering.
But get this, the same
kind of suggestability
works on the person who is named.
It's called nominative determinism,
and it's the idea that your name
can determine your career choices
and perhaps even your romantic partners.
To illustrate how
influential our subconscious
is, neuroscientist David Eagleman
points to studies in which people named
Dennis or Denise are disproportionately
likely to become dentists.
The point, Gar Bear, is that you can turn
this thing around and
get into the subconscious
of people using positive associations.
After all, the Germanic
origin of your name
means spear.
You aren't just an archaic weapon,
you're the symbol of the warrior.
You are the embodiment
of strength and courage,
and if that line of
logic doesn't take off,
you can always ride the coattails of
the renewed popularity of old lady names,
the Mabels, the Rubys, the Sadies,
and hope for the very same fate.
So Gary, while you're
out and about this week,
make sure to check in daily
at now.howstuffworks.com.
