HENRY

An analysis of the top 8,000 girls’ and boys’ names registered on birth certificates last year shows that parents are increasingly eschewing spellings that their parents would have recognised in favour of making up their own phonetic versions.

For hundreds of children born in 2007, Samuel became Samiul; Laura, Lora; Connor, Conna; and Anne, An.

Some view the phenomenon as evidence that lazy spelling in emails and on text messages is now mainstream; others wonder whether new mothers and fathers are just careless. Witness the 10 parents last year who took the trend for hyphenated names such as Lily-May or Ella-Louise to the extreme end of the spectrum by opting simply for Lily hyphen. (That’s Lily- on the birth certificate.) Or the six boys named Cam’ron. (Continued)

Posted on March 30th, 2008 by Simon Greenhill