Does this hold true for you?

Bebuh

Just saw this article, and while of course there will be exceptions to any study, I can believe the trends. What do you ladies think?

https://news.yahoo.com/baby-names-reveal-parents-political-ideology-121614527.html

 

Bebuh

MelRC117:

Just wanted to highlight this point in the article:

The results revealed that overall, the less educated the parent, the more likely they were to give their child either an uncommon name (meaning fewer than 20 children got the same name that year in California), or a unique name (meaning only one child got that name in 2004 in California). When parents had less than a college education, there were no major ideological differences in naming choice.

So no...if it is a yooneek name it isn't us just being mean if it comes off as the parents are uneducated.  Yes its a limited study for just one state and one year...but still goes to show...

Lol, that was my same thought.

plunderb

Yes, it holds true for our family. We are liberals with advanced degrees and definitely prefer softer consonants and lots of vowels. I find that a lot of the masculine names with harsh consonants do not project the type of masculinity I hope to teach my son. I'm thinking of names like Brecken, Ryker, Stryker, etc. that either sound aggressive or have violent connotations. Those just aren't our values.

That's not to say we wouldn't consider a consonanty name for family reasons. We had Conrad on our very short list in honor of DH's grandfather. But in general, we'd prefer a Julian or a Leo to a Ryder or a Hunter.

catahoulatte

Interesting. For the most part, I think we probably mostly true to the article. We are pretty libertarian in our views but we can lean either way- conservative or pretty liberal-depending on the subject. Both college educated. His name is classic and masculine but not harsh sounding at all (to me!).

jennkg3

I find this interesting. My dh is an engineer and I'm a teacher. I would say we have conservative views but can also be liberal depending. Our name choices have been unique for girls; however, boys have always been classic and strong. I wouldn't name my daughter from the top probably 50, but my son would probably be in the top 25. I feel males need to have a traditional strong name while I like my daughter to have something that sets her apart. Just a thought.

caramia582

Funny... I wasn't really buying the article until I came across the part that said highly educated liberals choose more feminine sounding names for boys and girls alike.  We have chosen Cameron and Drew for our DS's and in general I am drawn to boys names that have enough of a feminine quality to be used on girls.  I also love Casey and Avery for boys but DH shot them down because they were too feminine (he considers himself a Republican... hah!).  My style for girls names do tend to be feminine, slightly underused names as well. 

GrayGhost13

MelRC117:

Just wanted to highlight this point in the article:

The results revealed that overall, the less educated the parent, the more likely they were to give their child either an uncommon name (meaning fewer than 20 children got the same name that year in California), or a unique name (meaning only one child got that name in 2004 in California). When parents had less than a college education, there were no major ideological differences in naming choice.

So no...if it is a yooneek name it isn't us just being mean if it comes off as the parents are uneduated.  Yes its a limited study for just one state and one year...but still goes to show...

To further back up your point, I also thought this was an important fact:

Notably, the kinds of uncommon names chosen by upper-class liberals differed from the unusual names picked by people of lower socioeconomic status, Oliver said. Lower-status moms tend to invent names or pick unusual spellings of common names (Andruw instead of Andrew, for example). [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

"Educated liberal mothers are not making names up," Oliver said. "They're choosing more culturally obscure names, like Archimedes or Finnegan ? or, in our case, we named our daughter Esme."

In other words there is a difference between an uncommon name and a wholly invented name or spelling.

stahlop

Our boy name definitely goes toward Liberal, which we are. His name is Everett which is definitely softer sounding. Our daughter is Piper which, according to the article is more Conservative. Although, most of the other names was had on our list were much more feminine, softer names.

vulpini

GrayGhost13:

MelRC117:

Just wanted to highlight this point in the article:

The results revealed that overall, the less educated the parent, the more likely they were to give their child either an uncommon name (meaning fewer than 20 children got the same name that year in California), or a unique name (meaning only one child got that name in 2004 in California). When parents had less than a college education, there were no major ideological differences in naming choice.

So no...if it is a yooneek name it isn't us just being mean if it comes off as the parents are uneduated.  Yes its a limited study for just one state and one year...but still goes to show...

To further back up your point, I also thought this was an important fact:

Notably, the kinds of uncommon names chosen by upper-class liberals differed from the unusual names picked by people of lower socioeconomic status, Oliver said. Lower-status moms tend to invent names or pick unusual spellings of common names (Andruw instead of Andrew, for example). [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

"Educated liberal mothers are not making names up," Oliver said. "They're choosing more culturally obscure names, like Archimedes or Finnegan ? or, in our case, we named our daughter Esme."

In other words there is a difference between an uncommon name and a wholly invented name or spelling.

Yup.  Those yooneek names are stereotyped as coming from uneducated/trashy/teenage parents for a reason. 

highlights

What does it mean if we have one of each? DS1's name is more masculine while DS2's name is very feminine. Both are uncommon, but we are college educated. Interestingly enough, I was registered Democrat when DS1 was born, but have become more conservative since. 

So in our case? Who knows?  

queenbone

Interesting.

I feel like maybe I'm a SS on this? DS2's name is Francis which I know projects Catholic to most people, but I guess it depends upon how the researchers would perceive a Catholic sounding name. Is the family Ted Kennedy liberal or Bill O'Reilly conservative? We are very liberal. (Although Francis does have a more feminine feel to it since it is unisex.)

I also don't feel like I like a lot of vowel-y names. Most names we like have Rs in them.

But we definitely lean towards the more obscure, underused, but with a history names.

vulpini

It's mostly true for us.

We are both PhDs in the sciences and we lean very liberal, though we are not registered with any party and side with libertarians or conservatives on some issues.

We like mostly traditional/classic/common names for boys, but the ones with lots of soft sounds.  Lots of L's, N's, Th's, and Sh's and very few of the hard sounds. For girls we like somewhat less traditional/common names than for boys, but still far from unusual.  More than half of the girls names on my favorites list are L- El- or -el- names.  Almost all of them contain the letter I in the middle and end with the clearly feminine A.  DH likes somewhat less flowery and more traditional female names than I do, but also soft-sound ones than end in As.

I have to agree with the commenter above who said that the softer sounds better reflect the values she wants to see in her son.  We don't adhere to strict gender roles in our family and we value sensitivity/empathy in boys as much as in girls. The hard-sound names that people would stereotype as macho/cowboy aren't appealing probably in part for those reasons.

whoopsybaby

GrayGhost13:

MelRC117:

Just wanted to highlight this point in the article:

The results revealed that overall, the less educated the parent, the more likely they were to give their child either an uncommon name (meaning fewer than 20 children got the same name that year in California), or a unique name (meaning only one child got that name in 2004 in California). When parents had less than a college education, there were no major ideological differences in naming choice.

So no...if it is a yooneek name it isn't us just being mean if it comes off as the parents are uneduated.  Yes its a limited study for just one state and one year...but still goes to show...

To further back up your point, I also thought this was an important fact:

Notably, the kinds of uncommon names chosen by upper-class liberals differed from the unusual names picked by people of lower socioeconomic status, Oliver said. Lower-status moms tend to invent names or pick unusual spellings of common names (Andruw instead of Andrew, for example). [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

"Educated liberal mothers are not making names up," Oliver said. "They're choosing more culturally obscure names, like Archimedes or Finnegan ? or, in our case, we named our daughter Esme."

In other words there is a difference between an uncommon name and a wholly invented name or spelling.

DD2's name is Esme.  I'm pretty liberal but DH is fairly conservative.  I can really tell the ideological difference now that we're trying to name DS1.  My taste is much more feminine and drawn to literary and historical influences; DH likes traditional names with a spattering of cowboy style.  So this holds true for us.  

FrecklesInside

GrayGhost13:

MelRC117:

Just wanted to highlight this point in the article:

The results revealed that overall, the less educated the parent, the more likely they were to give their child either an uncommon name (meaning fewer than 20 children got the same name that year in California), or a unique name (meaning only one child got that name in 2004 in California). When parents had less than a college education, there were no major ideological differences in naming choice.

So no...if it is a yooneek name it isn't us just being mean if it comes off as the parents are uneduated.  Yes its a limited study for just one state and one year...but still goes to show...

To further back up your point, I also thought this was an important fact:

Notably, the kinds of uncommon names chosen by upper-class liberals differed from the unusual names picked by people of lower socioeconomic status, Oliver said. Lower-status moms tend to invent names or pick unusual spellings of common names (Andruw instead of Andrew, for example). [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

"Educated liberal mothers are not making names up," Oliver said. "They're choosing more culturally obscure names, like Archimedes or Finnegan ? or, in our case, we named our daughter Esme."

In other words there is a difference between an uncommon name and a wholly invented name or spelling.

This quote should be pulled out at times to help explain why certain names are shot down on this board.

Interesting article.  

Marsee

IDK. DH and I are very conservative/libertarian/right-wing. Both of us have degrees. DH is drawn to the typical manly/rugged boy names. I think I'm a SS, however, as I'm drawn to the liberal/obscure names (I'm an artist/designer). I was the only conservative in any of my art classes at school. While I usually totally identify/agree with liberal opinions on art, health and culture, I loathe liberal politics.

 Also, all this information from this study seems pretty obvious to me. I've made all  those observations before.

Soap1

Kind of a crappy study though.  They didn't actually measure political ideology of parents, they just used "voting patterns in the neighborhood" as a proxy.  So, it might just be reflecting that people who live in the same neighborhoods choose similar names, because they hear them a lot or have similar socio-economic status or whatever.

You'd really have to do a survey that asks parents how liberal/conservative they are and then asks what their kids are named to get a good idea of whether this is true.

Come on, all you PhDs, why aren't you guys ripping the methodology?