Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - May 6, 2011

Baby Names, 2011:

The annual list of most popular baby names has just been released and for the 12th straight year, the number one name for boys is Jacob. The rest of the top-10 boy names:
10. Anthony
9. Aiden
8. Daniel
7. Noah
6. Alexander
5. William
4. Jayden
3. Michael
2. Ethan
1. Jacob

The top 10 girl names:
10. Mia
9. Chloe
8. Madison
7. Abigail
6. Emily
5. Ava
4. Olivia
3. Emma
2. Sophia
1. Isabella.

The fastest rising names on the list came from the reality show, "16 and Pregnant." For girls, it was Macy (the teen mom on the show). For boys, it was Bentley, the name of Macy's baby.
For the first time since 1955, Elvis did not make the list of the nation's top one-thousand baby names.
Editor's note: I'm all shook up. (Maiman)

But wait! There's more: how about the most hated baby names?
That list comes from LAURA WATTENBERG, author of "The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby." [So magical it got its own subtitle!] She conducted an "informal" study and came up with the list. In general she found people hate "gender-bending" names in which a masculine name becomes feminine --like Addison or Madison.
They don't like the trendy names, either, though obviously not everyone agrees or they wouldn't be trendy, right? Also on the list of hate are names that are difficult to spell (Kaitlyn) and those that are too similar to other names (Jayden, Brayden, and Kayden).
It can be brutal to see your baby name choice on a list called "10 Most Hated Baby Names" (with Wattenberg observations in parenthesis), but here goes:

Girls:
10. Bertha
9. Makayla
8. Kaitlyn (for its "made-up" spelling)
7. Gertrude (people said this name is "ugly")
6. Addison (an example of a masculine named turned feminine, which many people dislike)
5. McKenna
4. Mackenzie
3. Madison
2. Destiny (people dislike names that confer a virtue onto a child. Also many associated this name with exotic dancers)
1. Nevaeh ("heaven" spelled backward and one of the most divisive names around)

Boys:
10. Jackson
9. Michael (too boring)
8. Tristan
7. Bentley (people dislike brand-name names, calling them "trashy." Bentley is a Rolls Royce model as well as a baby character's name on a reality show)
6. Hayden
5. Hunter (too much like a last name or "too violent")
4. Kaden
3. Aiden
2. Brayden
1. Jayden (these rhyming names struck many as overdone)