I’m seeing this so many times… Like Aiden, Caiden, Braiden, Jaiden, Paiden…

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    16·
    2 个月前

    Unique names and spellings became popular in the US during the 70s as part of the Black Power movement. The politically conscious black parents didn’t want to name their children European names, for some reason. The problem is that these black parents had no cultural link to Africa because that had been stolen from them.

    Fist came Arab names. I presume this has to do with the NOI and the black celebrities who converted to it. Some of these names are still popular like Omar and Jamal. Of course Black Americans have no more connection to Islam than they do to Christianity, So black parents just started making new names for their children.

    American popular culture tends to incubate in the black community and slowly drift into white culture. So it has gone with the unique baby names.

    • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
      114·
      2 个月前

      very good answer. white people have tried to take everything from the black community, and now the names…

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    2 个月前

    There’s a well-studied phenomenon called “social diffusion”. People of higher socioeconomic status seek out novel, unique, or fashionable baby names and start using them. These names gradually get picked up by families of lower socioeconomic status. Eventually the names become mainstream, and then finally decline in popularity.

  • EABOD25@lemm.eeEnglish
    131·
    2 个月前

    Aiden is tradition Gaelic and it means “fire”. Caiden is also Gaelic meaning “battle” Braiden is Gaelic meaning “salmon” Jayden is Hebrew for “God will judge” Hayden is old English meaning “hedged valley”

    • BJHanssen@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 个月前

      So I’m guessing it’s a combination of dun/den/tun etc being a common suffix in a lot of historical languages, and ‘ei’ being an extremely common diphthong worldwide just… leading to a lot of similar-sounding names that also converge in spelling in modern English?

    • JackGreenEarth@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      2 个月前

      I’d like to see your source for those. I don’t know Gaelic so I can’t fact check those ones, but I do know a bit of Hebrew, and names that mean ‘God X’ usually end in el, not en. Also, Hebrew doesn’t have an English J sound, it has the IPA J sound though, or English Y sound. The Hebrew word for judge is ‘shofet’.

      • lath@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 个月前

        Probably taken from this.

        The name is probably a modern invention, formed by blending the “Jay” sound from the 1970s-popular name Jason with the “den” sound from names like Braden, Hayden, Jordan and Zayden.[1] The biblical name Jadon (or Yadon), Hebrew for “he will judge”, appears in the Bible in Nehemiah 3:7,[2] but it is unlikely to be the source of the modern name.[1]

  • Travelator@thelemmy.club
    91·
    2 个月前

    I work with two guys named “Brayden”. One of them is a ginger. Both of them are nasty assholes and pissed off all the time. I guess I would be too if I were cursed with that name.

    But lots of people have gotten past unfortunate given names. “Rich” for example.

  • Jackie's Fridge@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 个月前

    It’s been around for a while. Over a decade ago Target ran a cheeky back to school advert featuring a slow pan across school cubbies with lunch pails all labelled with variant spellings of “Braiden”. I thought it was hilarious.

  • meyotch@slrpnk.net
    6·
    2 个月前

    Meanwhile, in Utah, a pair of new parents are becoming really charmed by the idea of ‘Brexit’ as a name for their next child.

    This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
      1·
      2 个月前

      When i read that i imagined that scene i. Fear and loathing in las vegas when they sniffed ether.