Call me Ishmael

By B.C.

AS SOME Economist colleagues have notedthis week, the range of first names in the United States is becoming more diverse, and that trend is unlikely to be stopped by a peculiar judicial decision mandating that a little boy should be called Martin rather than Messiah. The same phenomenon can be seen in England and Wales, where the Office of National Statistics has just published data about the names given to boys and girls last year. Names that were rare until recently (Keira and Caitlin for girls) or virtually unknown (Jaydon or Jenson for boys) have crept into the top 100 choices for their respective genders.

The one thing that doesn't change, whatever any American judge may say, is the desire to link the new-born child, in some way, with holiness or blessing. True, the most popular boy's name was the relatively secular Harry, with 7,168. But if the three main spellings of Muhammad/Mohammed/Mohammad are consolidated, they give Harry a close run at a combined total of 7,139. On the other hand if Harry is put together with Henry (from which Harry usually derives), the English royal name soars ahead at 10,069.

Elsewhere in the table, there are many names with deep Abrahamic roots, whether parents realise it or not. Combine Theo and Theodore (a Christian name meaning "gift of God", as does the Slavic Bogdan) and you get a respectable total of 2,284. Despite the Hispanic practice of calling male children Jesús, and the commonish Arabic name of Isa which means the same, it would be hard for a little boy in England to grow up with the name of Christianity's founder. But remember, that name is a variant of Joshua, which is more commonly associated with one of the heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures. Whatever the intention, no fewer than 4,444 little Joshuas were registered in England and Wales last year, putting the name in 11th place. Neither Abraham, Ibrahim nor any of the patriarch's variant forms makes the top 100, but two variants of his wife's name, Sarah/Sara, account for a decent total of 1,176. The pan-Abrahamic name of Adam does better at 1,907. Among the rising generation of Britons a good number are named after south Asian deities like Krishna, Varun or Lakshmi. No Hindu name makes it into the top 100, but then Hindu deities are so many.

In traditional societies, parents had little choice but to select a name from a narrow range of religiously approved possibilities. In Muslim countries, names associated with the faith's early years—Hasan, Ali or Omar for boys, Ayesha or Rabia for girls—naturally abound. In Greece, as social anthropologist Renee Hirschon has pointed out, baptising a child with a familiar saint's name (often shared with a grandparent) is a vital communal ritual. Parents may choose one non-Christian name (a classical one, say), but the baby also needs a Christian name to be baptised; and in the absence of that ritual, at least until very recently, the child hardly had any social existence. Similar social pressures existed, again until very recently, in Catholic Ireland. The story goes of a priest who baulked at baptising a child Hazel: "You could have chosen from any of the saints in heaven, but you've decided to call your little girl after a nut!"

Even in today's secular society, where the religious impulse (if it exists at all) is diffuse and sometimes poorly informed, people feel an atavistic desire to endow their child with sanctity. Consult a website like www.thinkbabynames.com and you will be directed to scores of "God names" that in one era or culture or another had some association with holiness. It's only human, really. For many people, bearing and naming a child is the most transcendental experience they will ever undergo.