Little Fiery One

Jessica's comment from the post about baby names brings up a subject I had read about recently. She mentioned that the name Aidan was the number one boy's name in 2006. I've heard this elsewhere, and I find it remarkable, since it was only #43 in 2005, according to the US Social Security Administration. Personally, I had never really met too many Aidans before. I think this quote from The Baby Name Wizard is probably quite accurate:

It's a fair bet that few of the parents now choosing this name have ever met an adult Aidan. As recently as the late 1980s, it was an obscure Irish saint's name. Today, Aidan's sublimely clean sound is the sound of a generation. In fact, with its authentic Celtic roots, Aidan is now the traditional alternative to names like Brayden, Kaden and Jaiden.

It just goes to show you that you really can't predict which name will take off next. All it takes is one big celebrity or one popular TV show to push a name to the forefront. What was it that did it for Aidan?

Jessica suggests that it was because of a character named Aidan from the popular sit-com, Sex and the City. We have a dictionary of baby names that points to the actor Aidan Quinn (right). Our dictionary is from 2000, so it probably missed out on Sarah Jessica Parker & co.

I really like this dictionary. It was published in the UK, so it has lots of interesting names from the British Isles that you don't normally hear. Plenty of Gaelic stuff with interesting spellings (like Eilidh, Pwyll, Gwalchgwyn and Llywarch). I also like it because it provides some emtymology of the names. I have found many "exhaustive" online naming guides which boast to having thousands of names and their meanings, but they provide no explanation as to why a name might mean what it does. In some cases, the definitions seem quite arbitrary. Anyways, I happened to find the entry for Aidan in this dictionary:

AIDAN: The anglicised masculine form of AEDAN. A variant form is EDAN. St. Aidan (d. 651) was an Irish missionary in Northumbria who founded a monastery on Lindisfarne (Holy Island). Aidan Quinn is an American film actor.

Well, that is interesting. Aidan comes from Aedan. What does the book say about the name Aedan?

AEDAN (pronounced ay-dann): a diminutive form of AED, with the -an suffix (Scottish and Irish Gaelic). The Anglicised forms are AIDAN and EDAN. An early king of Dalraida was named AEDAN, as were twenty-three other saints of the Gaelic Church.

Wow. Twenty-three saints, eh? Well, now let's look up AED.

AED (pronounced aigh): a masculine first name meaning 'fiery one', from aed, 'fire' (Scottish and Irish Gaelic). A common name among the Gaels, and said to have been the most frequent personal name in early Ireland. It was so common that most who had the name had a further descriptive name or nickname, like Aed Finn (Gaelic fionn, 'fair') or Aed Ruad (Gaelic ruadh, 'red'). It was the name given to several high kings of Ireland and a king of the Scots, son of Kenneth MacAlpin. The name is also found as Aedh, Aodh.

I don't know about you, but I found this fascinating. A name that was the most common name in Ireland hundreds of years ago suddenly comes charging into North America as the most popular name of 2006. If this continues, perhaps they will need to revert to the Irish solution, of adding a nickname.

Since Jessica says that her son Aidan had the name several years before the big boom, he can be called "Aidan the Old".