here does a name come from, anyway? Not, that is, the actual source of the name – that much is usually obvious: there’s the Bible, there’s the huge cluster of traditional English and Germanic and Italian and French names, there are princess names and hippie names, nostalgic names and place names.

Among the most interesting revelations in the data [collected from birth-certificate information for every child born in California over the past 4 decades] is the correlation between a baby’s name and the parents’ socio-economic status.

There is a clear pattern at play: once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber and Heather started out as high-end names, as did Stephanie and Brittany. For every high-end baby named Stephanie or Brittany, another five lower-income girls received those names within ten years.

So where do lower-end families go name-shopping? Many people assume that naming trends are driven by celebrities. But celebrities actually have a weak effect on baby names. Considering all of the Brittanys, Britneys, Brittanis, Brittanies, Brittneys, and Brittnis you encounter these days, you might think of Britney Spears. But she is in fact a symptom, not a cause, of the Brittany / Britney / Brittani / Brittanie / Brittney / Brittni explosion. With the most common spelling of the name, Brittany, and number eighteen among high-end familiar and number five among low-end families, it is surely approaching its pull date. Decades earlier, Shirley Temple was similarly a symptom of the Shirley boom, though she is often now remembered as its cause. (It should also be noted that many girls’ names, including Shirley, Carol, Leslie, Hilary, Renee, Stacy, and Tracy began life as boys’ names, but girls’ names almost never cross over to boys.)

So it isn’t famous people who drive the name game. It is the family just a few blocks over, the one with the bigger house and newer car. The kind of families that were the first to call their daughters Amber or Heather and are now calling them Lauren or Madison. The kind of families that used to name their sons Justin or Brandon and are now calling them Alexander or Benjamin. Parents are reluctant to poach a name from someone too near – family members or close friends – but many parents, whether they realize it or not, like the sound of names that sound “successful.”

But as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents begin to abandon it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower-end parents may not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower-end parents, meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper-end parents have broken in.

So the implication is clear: the parents of all those Alexandras, Laurens, Katherines, Madisons, and Rachels should not expect the cachet to last much longer. Those names are already on their way to overexposure. Where, then, will the new high-end names come from?

Drawn from a pair of “smart” databases, here is a sampling of today’s high-end names. Some of then, as unlikely as it seems, are bound to become tomorrow’s mainstream names. Before you scoff, ask yourself this: do any of them seem more ridiculous than “Madison” might have seemed ten years ago?

Most Popular Girls’ Names of 2015?			Most Popular Boys’ Names of 2015?
Annika Ansley Ava Avery Aviva Clementine Eleanora Ella	Emma Fiona Flannery Grace Isabel Kate Lara Linden	Maeve Marie-Claire Maya Philippa Phoebe Quinn Sophie Waverly	Aidan Aldo Anderson Ansel Asher Beckett Bennett Carter	Cooper Finnegan Harper Jackson Johan Keyon Liam	Maximilian McGregor Oliver Reagan Sander Sumner Will

[Ed. Note: Freakonomics came out in 2001 and we've already seen many of these names skyrocket up the name charts!]

Obviously, a variety of motives are at work when parents consider a name for their child. They may want something traditional or something bohemian, something unique or something perfectly trendy. It would be an overstatement to suggest that all parents are looking – whether consciously or not – for a “smart” name or a “high-end” name. What the California names data suggest is that an overwhelming number of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be. The name isn’t likely to make a shard of difference. But the parents can at least feel better knowing that, from the very outset, they tried their best.