Do you ever stop to think how rare imagination sometimes is? Even our everyday conversations are often hijacked by meaningless “all purpose” words. Is everything really “awesome”? All I can say is whatever.
The map below shows an example that I found to be quite surprising. (Next to the year is the top name of that year. The map shows the state-by-state breakdown.) It’s no big deal in the grand scheme of things. Not even close. Like if someone named George wants to name all five of his sons George, the world will continue spinning. As inconsequential as this might be, it’s still rather astounding to see how many people are completely synchronized with everyone else. But it looks like maybe it’s getting slightly better over time. Even so, there must be about 50 million Jennifers out there. It was quite a reign, Jennifers. 14 years.
I recently saw in a public place two little children I took to be brother and sister. Their names were Grayson and Paisley. I think I avoided rolling my eyes, but I can’t swear to it. Those names strike me as going too far in the other direction: yes, they’re sort of unusual names, but in all likelihood for every 100 kids with those two names, 99 of them are meaningless. It’s just being trendy. It’s not like the family hails from Paisley, Scotland, or that their grandfather was named Grayson or the mother’s maiden name was Grayson.
Here’s another example looking at vocabulary. Slang, specifically.