How Hannah Became Interested in Names

Baby names are in inexhaustible cultural text. They're a way to talk about class, race, and gender, of course — but also the way we perform familial respect and coherence. In this episode, sociologist Hannah Emery — who wrote her dissertation on baby names — joins us to talk about the history of baby names, how naming conventions and aspirations have changed over the last century, and the broad and specific requests parents bring to her as a naming consultant. It's all fascinating — and I can't wait to continue the conversation (about our names and the names of the children in our lives) in the comments.

AND GREAT NEWS: WE HAVE VERY GOOD EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS NOW! They come out within 24 hours of the pod, so you just have to be a little patient and then come back and click here. We pay an actual human for help with these, so thank you for either being a paid subscriber or listening to the ads that make this model possible!

If you're a paid subscriber and haven't yet set up your subscriber RSS feed in your podcast player, here's the EXTREMELY easy how-to .

And if you're having any other issues with your Patreon subscription — please get in touch! Email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail OR submit a request to Patreon Support. Thank you for making the switch with us — the podcast in particular is much more at home here!

Thanks to the sponsors of today's episode!

• Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/CULTURE

• Get 15% off OneSkin with the code CULTURE at https://www.oneskin.co/CULTURE

• Treat your dog with Ollie! Go to ollie.com/culture and use code CULTURE to get 60% off your first box

• Head to moshlife.com/CULTURE to save 20% off plus FREE shipping on the Best sellers Trial Pack or the NEW plant-based trial pack

Show Notes:

• You can find Hannah's fascinating name newsletter here (Try starting with this piece on middle names)

• I put Melody's name graph up top but here's mine (you can find yours for the U.S. here)

• The Top U.S. Names of 2025 According to BabyCenter:

• This made me laugh

  We're currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• HILARY DUFF!!! The comeback, the new album, let's talk about all of it — with Hilary Duff expert/forever-fan ALLIE JONES (also Melody loves Hilary Duff so much and will be very sad if we don't get enough questions for this episode)

• Dark academia — the trends, the themes, the popularity, whatever you want (for an episode with R.F. Kuang!)

• Conversion Therapy (how it affects people late into life, how it still exists, etc. etc.)

• Your Parent(s) Died — How Do You Deal with All This PAPERWORK and bureaucracy??? (with death doula Becky Robison)

• KID INFLUENCERS — what happens when your parent puts you on camera before you can really consent? We're talking with the author of a new book about the ramifications of growing up within these worlds — it's gonna be so good.

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment

• As always, you can submit your questions (and ideas for future eps) here

  For this week’s discussion: What names still bewilder you? Let's talk about them!