When Isabella Pascucci gulped her first lungfuls of air last New Year's Day, she was more than just the first baby born in Rhode Island in 2002.
Eight-pound Isabella also represented the weighty decisions that parents across the nation face when choosing a name for their child:
How to pick a name in keeping with the latest fashion without abandoning tradition?
How to balance the forces of popular culture and ethnic identity?
How to pick a name that will establish a child's individuality without sounding weird?
"Culturally, one of the biggest factors now is not to have a common name," said Cleveland Kent Evans. "Somehow they think it's child abuse if a kid gets into a kindergarten class and there's another child with the same name."
Evans, a psychology professor at Bellevue University in Nebraska, is a leading expert in how babies are named.
"One of the commonest things parents are always telling me is they're looking for a name that's different, but not too different," Evans said.
That was the case with James and Kendra Pascucci, of Providence, last year. "My husband first picked Marissa, and I didn't like that," said Kendra Pascucci. "I just wanted one that was different."
Isabella wound up not being very different. The name ranked 10th among girls born in Rhode Island the last three years, according to state Health Department birth records. In all, 164 Isabellas were born the last three years, making Isabella the most popular name for girls of Italian descent. The figures are based on births in 2000, 2001 and the first nine months of 2002, the latest period for which data is available.
"Individualism has been a very big thing," said Evans. "It becomes more important for people to assert their individualism in superficial ways . . . as the culture as a whole becomes more homogenized."
One result of the desire for individuality is that the most popular names are getting less popular.
In Rhode Island in 1875, 1 out of every 8 boys was named John, the top name, according to records in the State Archives, and 1 out of 6 girls had the top female name, Mary.
A century and a quarter later, the top names, Michael and Emily, account for only 1 out of every 50 babies of their gender, according to the Health Department.
Evans attributed the widening diversity in names to several factors.
Until the late 1700s, various cultures followed strict rules dictating what a child's name would be, leaving little choice to the parents. As an example, the first daughter might be named for the mother's mother, the second daughter for the father's mother; or children might be named for their godparents, Evans said.
As a result, the pool of first names available stayed small. "You didn't get much turnover from generation to generation in what people named their kids," Evans said. Even if parents were inclined to break with tradition, they did not have many options, he said.
But then books -- especially novels and other works of fiction -- became popular and available to the masses. Simply to avoid confusion among readers, authors gave their characters distinctly different names, according to Evans. This prompted them to become inventive with names, which widened the pool of possibilities and made it more fashionable to break with tradition, Evans said.
ONE OF THE best known -- though more recent -- examples is Wendy, which was invented by J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. Evans said it supposedly came from the daughter of a friend, whom Barrie called his "friendy-wendy."
In the 20th century, radio, television, the movies and other entertainment media joined books in giving parents inspiration.
Nationwide, from 1999 to 2000, the girl's name that increased the most in popularity was Trinity, according to Evans. For boys, Neo saw a similar increase, he said. Trinity and Neo were main characters in the 1999 movie The Matrix.
According to Evans, parents usually do not name their children directly after characters in movies and on television. Instead, they credit the show or movie with giving them ideas.
"I was watching Days of Our Lives, and a girl on the show was named Belle. And I liked Belle," said Isabella's mom, Kendra Pascucci. When she learned that Belle was short for Isabella, a very Italian name, Kendra was hooked.
Grace, currently one of the hottest names for girls, has gotten three popularity boosts from television, Evans said. The series L.A. Law in the 1980s and '90s featured a character named Grace, followed by the 1990s series Grace Under Fire and the current hit comedy Will & Grace.
Sydney, as a girl's name, seems to have enjoyed a boost from the series Providence, though Evans said the name had already begun climbing in popularity before the series premiered in 1999.
For those wondering about "ratings wars," Grace beat Sydney 12 to 7 in the city of Providence, and 132 to 104 throughout Rhode Island, the last three years, according to the Health Department.
SPORTS FIGURES and musicians can also provide naming inspiration, especially in minority communities, where they are more prominent role models, Evans said. "The sports figures who get the most babies named after them are primarily black basketball players."
Both Michael and Jordan rank in the Top 10 for black boys in Rhode Island the last three years, according to the Health Department.
While sports figures and musicians can buoy names, politicians can drag them down, Evans said. "We tend to avoid names of politicians. It's considered gauche. They know their friends will laugh at them behind their back. Hillary had been increasing steadily as a girl's name until 1992."
While politicians can be death to a name, death can breathe new life into a name -- if the person who dies is famous.
"In situations of death, you get this real sharp spike that goes up and back down again," Evans said. "There was a jump in Diana right after [Princess Diana] died." In the United States, the surge of Dianas was primarily in the Hispanic community.
Similarly, after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, his wife's name, Jacqueline, and the nickname Jackie climbed in popularity. Evans said Jacqueline Kennedy was the last political figure in America after whom large numbers of people named their children.
Now, the Internet has joined traditional media to give its own boost to the growth in diversity of names, Evans said. Parents use baby name Web sites to find out what names are most popular -- then not give those names to their children. The Internet is also rife with sources of suggestions for "unusual" names, he said, which helps explain why parents can suddenly give hundreds of children the same "unique" name any given year.
BESIDES POPULARIZING names, television, movies and books have reversed the sex of many names, Evans said. "One of the first examples of this is Shirley."
In 1849, Charlotte Bronte wrote a novel called Shirley. The main character was named Shirley because her parents really wanted a boy.
In the 1950s, a television series, Bachelor Father, turned Kelly into a girl's name.
Similar metamorphoses have converted Ashley, Lacy, Leslie and Lee to girl's names, too, said Evans, who added the same is happening to Sydney.
Evans said the transformation can be total for younger generations. "They can't conceive of a boy named Ashley," he said. "And Sydney will be the same way."
The conversion tends to be one-way. "Normally, once a name becomes 90 percent female, people won't name sons that anymore," Evans said.
A notable exception is Bailey. In the 1970s and '80s, the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati had a female character called Bailey, and parents started naming their daughters Bailey. This was turned around in the 1990s, when one of the main characters in the series Party of Five was a boy named Bailey.
Evans said this phenomenon is a powerful clue that sexism is still a strong force in American culture. "It's still better to be male than it is to be female," he said. Giving a girl a "boy's name" is a forming of social climbing. "It's giving her something that makes her seem of higher status," Evans said. "Women who have sexually ambiguous names may get more respect."
Differentiation between the sexes tends to vary according to the parents' socioeconomic status, according to Evans.
COLLEGE-EDUCATED professionals tend to give children names that emphasize intellectual attributes and sound more serious, he said. Blue-collar parents tend to give names that emphasize the physical differences between the sexes. Blue-collar boys tend to get strong, masculine names, while the girls get frillier, sexy names, names that Evans said college-educated parents might consider "stripper" names.
The two groups also tend to look at different sources for distinctive-sounding names. College-educated parents favor revivals of older names, such as a current surge in Abigails, Evans said. Blue-collar parents look for "new" names, words not in use as personal names, such as the recent favorite, Dakota, he said.
In either group, parents are more likely to give girls more exotic names that are momentarily in fashion, he said. "There's still pressure to give boys names that are from the family or at least sound adult."
Naming patterns also vary across ethnic groups, Evans said.
When new immigrant groups arrive, they tend to give their children "American" names that help them blend into their new culture. After several generations, when the immigrant community is well established, the great-grandchildren of immigrants turn back to their cultural roots.
The same has played out in Rhode Island.
The state Health Department determines a baby's race and ethnicity based on the mother -- an institutionalized form of sexism. For Asian babies in the last three years, the list of top names sounds much like the nation as a whole: Emily, Ashley, and Jessica top the girls list; Nicholas, Brandon, Ethan, the boys.
In more established Rhode Island communities, decidedly ethnic names mix with "American" names.
For Hispanics: Luis, Jose, Angel and Carlos for boys.
For Irish: Erin, Meghan and Molly for girls; Aidan, Sean and Liam for boys.
For Italians: Gianna and Mia for girls, on a list topped by Isabella.
As in Isabella Pascucci. Whose parents are James and Kendra (from a character in a romance novel Kendra's mother had read).
Said Kendra, whose grandfather, Stephen Sorrentino, came over from Messina, Sicily: "I like the old Italian names."
See how popular your baby's name is on the Rhode Island and national levels, and browse Web sites on baby names, their origins and more, at:
http://projo.com/extra/2003/babynames/
