As a result, given names associated with the elderly became less attractive to new parents. The Industrial Revolution also speeded up the spread of literacy, and through their reading people came across a much wider variety of names - Dickens alone created a thousand named characters. This is not to say that the custom of naming babies after family members has died out, as illustrated by the Royal Family - Philip begat Charles Philip Arthur George, who begat William Arthur Philip Louis, who begat George Alexander Louis.
Image caption Dickens characters such as Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist introduced Britons to botanical first names What motivates parents to give unusual names? In part, it's an extension of what happened in the 19th Century. Parents then had Dickens - for example, his characters named Daisy, Flora, Rose and Rosa probably helped foster the Victorian fashion for botanical names for girls. Parents now have Google - the Office for National Statistics lists the 7,500 different names given to three or more British girls (from Aabidah to Zyva) and nearly 5,000 different names given to three or more boys (from Aaban to Zyon).
Image copyright AP Image caption Keira Knightley's first name arose from a spelling mistake on her birth certificate Keira Knightley would have been Kiera had it not been for a misspelling on her birth certificate.
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In 2001, Kiera was much more popular than Keira, but when Knightley's film career took off in 2002, Keira rocketed into the top 100 names in 2004. And by 2007, at the height of its popularity (and, perhaps, Knightley's) it was a top 50 name, with three times more babies named Keira than Kiera. More recently, Knightley's film output has gone down - and so has the popularity of Keira, which left the top 100 in 2013 and is heading downwards. Zayn is another unusual name that's become more popular recently. Zayn Malik was a member of the phenomenally successful band One Direction, which first performed in 2010. In 2009, Zayn was ranked 696th on the list of British boys' names, but climbed to 220th in 2015. It seems reasonably certain that this change in popularity can be explained by Malik's rise to fame.
But as the chart shows, the comeback began in the 1970s when the name's long downward trajectory suddenly reversed, for no obvious reason, until once again it became a top five name. It may be that more influential than celebrities are families who live nearby in more affluent neighbourhoods. Poorer parents may believe they can give their children a better chance of success in life by giving them names popular in richer areas. A Californian study showed that once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. However, to quote researchers Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, "as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents begin to abandon it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower-end parents may not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely." In case you're thinking that this is just those crazy Californians, recall that Will Coster said exactly the same thing about 16th Century England. So, if you want to see some of the most popular British names of the next generation, a good place to start may be today's birth announcements in The Times.
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Neil Burdess is the author of Hello, My Name Is The Remarkable Story of Personal Names published by Sandstone Press on 3 November. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.
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