Fad Baby Names Tend to Fizzle Fast

May 6 -- TUESDAY, May 5 (HealthDay News) -- Faddish baby names don't retain their appeal for long, a new study suggests. But names that take their time becoming popular seem most apt to stick around.

The findings, from research published Tuesday in a top scientific journal, offer insight into how we become suspicious of sudden fads and prefer the tried and true, said the study's lead author, Jonah Berger, assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Things that catch on more quickly are more likely to be seen as fads and decline more quickly," Berger said. "We can show that things that catch on quickly are less successful over all."

That dynamic could be at play in everything from music and fashion to cars and hair styles, Berger said.

In the study, Berger and his colleagues examined the popularity of 2,570 names given children in France between 1900 and 2004. They also looked at names that were given to at least 1,850 babies in the United States in any year in that period, as long as the names remained fairly common for at least six years.

The researchers found that many names grew in popularity over decades and then dipped. The name "Charlene," for example, was most popular from about 1930 to 1970, before dwindling in popularity and becoming fairly uncommon by 2000.

The names "Kristi" and "Tricia," by contrast, zoomed up in popularity in the early 1970s but lost much of their appeal by 1985.

In other words, they were fads that fizzled. "Faster adoption speed means faster death," Berger said.

The name "Shaniqua" also demonstrates the fad phenomenon. BabyNameWizard.com, a Web site that tracks baby names, reveals that the name zoomed up in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s but vanished by 2000.

And what about names that have been around seemingly forever? "They probably didn't catch on very quickly," Berger speculated. "They probably caught on more slowly and deliberately" and, therefore, had staying power.