I would think
Draven has much more to do with the character in the cult film "The Crow" than with
Chester Bennington's child.
And it would be hard to attribute
Joaquin's place on the list to
Kelly Ripa's child because of its being such a traditional name in the Hispanic community.
Peyton was also definitely on the rise before anyone outside of his hometown had ever heard of
Peyton Manning.
And I'd bet
Santino has more to do with
Santino Quaranta than
Santino Rice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santino_Quaranta
It's also a bit dicey to correlate celebrity babies too much with general name fashions, since of course celebrities are affected by the same general shifts in taste as the rest of us are. So many celebrity baby names are more results rather than causes of a particular trend. There are some, such as
Maddox, Kingston, and Bria (from
Eddie Murphy's daughter) which do seem to be linked to the birth of such babies. But there are others like
Hazel where the name was clearly on the rise several years before the celebrity baby was born.
Julia Roberts may have reinforced
Hazel's rise a bit, but she didn't start its comeback. And I think the number of people who would even know the middle name of
John Edwards' son would be way too tiny for that to have been an influence on the rise of
Atticus.
But I think most of your list shows definite influences, and your comment about most parents not deliberately trying to create "namesakes" but just being inspired by publicity given to celebrity names which fit in with fashionable sounds is right on. :)
This message was edited 5/29/2008, 8:20 AM