The One Word That Explains a Generational Shift You Can’t Ignore

We knew we didn’t want anything so obscure it would leave future teachers fumbling during roll call, but we also didn’t want a name so common she’d be one of five in her kindergarten class. We wanted something meaningful. Cross-cultural. Easy to pronounce regardless of your native tongue. Familiar, yet distinct. And, our last name’s initial being V, we have to watch initials very closely so as not to resemble some contagion or virus.

Adelyn, we thought, was a safe middle ground. A name that had breached the top 150 baby girl names in recent years and one we knew several kids already carried. But within hours of sharing her name with the hospital team, we heard a pattern: "That’s so unique! I’ve never met an Adelyn before."

And just like that, I was reminded how much the name pool has changed.

The Great Name Diversification

In 1947, over 5.5% of all baby girls born in the U.S. were named Linda. That’s nearly 100,000 babies with one name, about 1 in every 18 girls born that year. Fast-forward to 2024, and the top girl’s name, Olivia, accounted for just 1% of all baby girls (roughly 17,000 of 1.77 million). For boys, the top name Liam claimed only 1.3% (about 24,000 of 1.85 million) (Social Security Administration, 2025).

What does this tell us? That naming children in the U.S. has become radically more diverse. The top names today carry a fraction of the cultural dominance they once did. The explosion in variety isn’t random, it reflects a deeper cultural shift toward individualism, identity expression, and curated uniqueness.

Jean Twenge (2023), in her book Generations, identifies this trend and links it to America’s rising individualism. But we can take it further: naming is more than a stylistic preference. It’s a sociological artifact. A breadcrumb trail of how parents see the world, and how they hope the world will see their child.

Gen X: The Great Name Revolutionaries

If Millennials and Gen Z are the recipients of individualized names, it was Gen X who largely drove the shift. Unlike their Boomer parents, many of whom were named Susan, Linda, or John, Gen Xers grew up in an era saturated with media. They watched as TV characters like Chandler, Buffy, Xander, Emma, and Summer gave rise to names that previously didn’t top the charts or even make the top 100 lists in American nurseries (Using Available Social Security Database, 2025).

This wasn’t just pop culture imitation. It was an implicit pushback against conformity. Many Gen Xers were raised in homes that either idealized or obscured childhood: children as trophies or children as problems to be hidden. Either way, they were often not seen as unique individuals. Kids, collectively, were a parent’s accessory.

TV and Baby Names

Television and film have long shaped naming trends in America. For instance, following the Friends finale in May 2002, when Ross and Rachel named their daughter Emma, the name shot up to #4 in the U.S. in 2002 and soon reclaimed the #1 spot by 2008, where it remained through the mid-2010s (De Vries, 2023). Meanwhile, Chandler Bing boosted interest in the name “Chandler —which first entered the SSA Top 1,000 during the show's heyday, and its use more than doubled over the 1990s and early 2000s (Momcozy, 2024; BabyNames1000, 2024). More recently, the popularity of names like Maeve and Otis surged following Netflix’s Sex Education (premiered January 11, 2019; White, 2019), with Maeve breaking into the U.S. top 150 female names by 2021—after hovering in the top 500 since around 2013—according to Social Security Administration data (FamilyEducation, 2025; Nickerson, 2018). Even more striking, the unconventional name Eleven, likely inspired by Stranger Things, entered SSA data in 2017 (with seven girls named Eleven), rising to 12 girls and 7 boys by 2021, a clear example of how swiftly pop culture can seed new names (Appellation Mountain, 2022; NameCensus, 2023).

So when Gen Xers became parents, they wanted something different. They wanted to see each child as their own story, their own experience. Naming was the first canvas. And they passed that trend down to their children, who are now naming children.

Meaning Over Matching

By the time Millennials became parents, the desire for uniqueness had already become normalized and a fundamental part of one’s identity. And with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, it's now expected. But the motivation has subtly shifted. While Gen X and early Millennial parents may have named their children to stand out, Millennials and Gen Z are naming to make meaning. With later-born Millennials and early Gen Zers having kids, we are seeing traces back to family names or nostalgic names. Not necessarily Juniors, but names from way back in family trees. They still want distinctiveness, yes, but they also want resonance. We know that these younger generations have a deep desire for purpose and intentionality. Each group, manifesting that purpose slightly differently.

Parents today scour etymologies, search name meanings, consider linguistic accessibility across cultures. They look for names that feel emotionally aligned with birth stories, values, even global identity.

My wife and I saw this in our own process. Growing up as "Ryan V." and "Jessica #19" (her first and last names were so common, she was actually #19 at our small university for her email address), we were conditioned by our shared experiences with common names. We didn’t want to overcorrect into esoteric territory, but we wanted Adelyn’s name to have meaning. And we wanted it to reflect the expanding, interconnected world she’s born into.

What This Means for Leaders

Here’s the broader takeaway: naming isn’t just a parenting choice. It’s a reflection of how individualism now forms the very bedrock of identity. Whether or not parents realized it, this trend most certainly was a leading indicator of how parents would parent and how children would be raised.

Traditionally, Boomers were loyal to institutions. Gen X distrusted them. Millennials curated their image. Gen Z custom-builds their identity. And Gen Alpha? They’re starting life with names that no longer need to be shared with millions of peers. Their very introduction to the world signals that they are unique, they matter, and they have a story worth telling.

This matters in the workplace too. If you lead a team today, remember that for younger generations, individuality isn’t a phase. It was built-in. They didn’t grow up being one of many. They grew up being one-of-a-kind. And I’m talking about way more than their name, but instead, how they were treated throughout childhood. That has implications for how they want to be managed, mentored, and recognized.

And that has ripple effects far beyond the nursery.

Boomers saw conformity as a signal of success. Be a “company man,” follow the path, climb the ladder, get that car but upgrade it, get that house, but a bit bigger than the Jones’. But that formula doesn’t land the same with younger generations. When someone’s told from birth that they’re unique, they don’t just want to contribute, they want to know how their contribution is theirs. They want to see their fingerprints on the outcome.

That’s the leadership challenge, and opportunity, of our time.

The key isn’t bending an organization’s vision to fit every personal desire. In fact, that would be terrible leadership. Instead, it is understanding what drives an individual on your team, and then showing them how that passion fits into something bigger.

Leaders need to start that alignment early, during the interviews, long before the first day on the job. Interviews should be less about checking boxes and more about listening: Who is this person becoming? What do they want to build? If we get that right, we’re not just assigning work, we’re inviting ownership into the larger vision and purpose of the organization.

At any age and in any generation, when someone feels like the task is theirs, when they see how their strengths move the mission forward, they don’t just comply, they commit. And that shift from compliance to contribution is the difference between a team that performs and a team that transforms.

As Twenge (2023) notes, naming diversity is one of the clearest markers of rising individualism in American life. And it starts before a child even takes their first breath.

Adelyn reminded me of that.

Want to work with Ryan?