The good news is we think there is a 50/50 chance the baby will be either a boy or a girl -- and it was a 48.6% tie on the gender question with 2 people not giving an opinion. No help there, so let's move onto names.
There is a lot riding on the name for the baby, so we asked about baby names. We already know a middle name of Wayne is a bad idea. The Social Security Administration also just recently released the popular baby names for 2006.
Boy Girl
1 Jacob Emily
2 Michael Emma
3 Joshua Madison
4 Ethan Isabella
5 Matthew Ava
6 Daniel Abigail
7 Christopher Olivia
8 Andrew Hannah
9 Anthony Sophia
10 William Samantha
Despite the obvious benefits of being able to google a unique name, there is some criticism for being too novel as reported in this Guardian article.
In his book Baby Name Report Card, UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian tested a host of names to see how attractive people found them. Some names immediately aroused images of success, others of popularity or kindness. On the whole, people judged to have more traditional names such as Rachel and Robert did extremely well. More alternative names scored badly. Breeze, for example, was given 16 out of 100, while Christopher received full marks. 'A name is part of an impression package,' said Mehrabian. 'Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish.'
The boy name theoretically was a no brainer. It may go back even farther, but there is a pattern to boy names in my family:
William Robert DeLancey
Robert George DeLancey
George Jay DeLancey
Jayson Jeremy DeLancey
Most of you also liked Jeremy, 21.1% (or 8) in fact. The other top choices:
18.4% 7 Reed
13.2% 5 Logan
13.2% 5 Benjamin
7.9% 3 Finn
5.3% 2 Marshall
There were a lot of other suggestions getting one vote each: Koos, Mechanic, Lupay, Deven, Noah, Gabe, Bobby, and Reece. Nobody seemed intrigued by Leif or Stone.
For girl names there was not as much of a variety to choose from. Most of you (50%, 19) picked Lily as a good name for a girl. Gabriella was second with 28.9% and Harmony receiving only 3 votes. There was also votes for Reagan, Tia, Driver, Stefanie, and Erotica Jones.
Our choice of first names come with some ambiguity in spelling. Using the baby search tool on the Social Security Administration website we have some indications. First off, in the past 15 years there are no boys named Lily or Lilly and no girls named Reed or Reid. No gender confusion, check. As for popularity in 2006, Lilly ranks 151 while Lily ranks 33. Reed comes in at 470 and Reid has a slight edge at 422. Your opinion was consistent with the overall trend.
