Hallmark in […] a hallmark of individualism, can be best rep...

Millennials Are Giving Their Babies Increasingly Strange Names

Mandy Oaklander

Sept. 29, 2016

The people having the most kids in this country, Millennials, are giving their babies stranger and stranger names. In a time when actual people are naming their children Legendary and Sadman and Lux, that should perhaps come as no surprise.

Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, and research assistant Lauren Dawson analyzed the first names of 358 million babies in a U.S. Social Security Administration database. Between 2004 and 2006, 66% of boys and 76% of girls had a name that wasn’t one of the 50 most common names of that time period. By contrast, in 2011-2015, 72% of boys and 79% of girls had names that were not in the top 50 most popular. In the top 10 for 2015 in the U.S. were Harper, Liam, Mason, Isabella, Olivia, Ava, and Mia. Brooklyn was ranked 31st most popular for girls across the U.S. (though not for girls in New York, where the name didn’t rank in the top 100).

Twenge credits the rise of stranger names on our increasingly individualistic culture: one that focuses on the self and is less concerned with social rules. “Millennials were raised with phrases like, you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks of you, you can be anything you want to be, it’s good to be different, you have to love yourself first before you love anyone else,” says Twenge. Our obsession with celebrities is also a hallmark of individualism.

Twenge found that Millennials are much more accepting of same-sex relationships and experiences. “What we’re seeing is this movement toward more sexual freedom,” Twenge told TIME. “There’s more freedom for people to do what they want without following the traditional, often now seen as outdated, social rules about who you’re supposed to have sex with and when.”

Adaptado de: http://time.com/4511927/millennials-parents-baby-names/ Acesso em: 01º outubro 2016