Sask. baby names all about the vowels
SASKATOON — The first time Tricia and Leon Zinkowski heard the name “Zarek” was long before they were ready to have children.
“We were just talking about how awesome of a name Zarek Zinkowski would be if we ever had a boy,” Tricia said after seeing the name on their church’s baptism list.
Years later and now married, Tricia and Leon had a Top 5 list of girl and boy names prepared as Tricia ambled to the hospital in labour. Zerek (with an ‘e’, not an ‘a’) was their top choice.
“As soon as I saw him, I just knew his name was Zerek,” Tricia said.
There are no Zereks on the 2013 list of most popular Saskatchewan baby names, released Thursday by eHealth Saskatchewan.
For the fourth year running, Liam was the moniker assigned to the most Saskatchewan baby boys — 92 Liams were added to the fray in 2013. Emma continued to dominate as the most popular girl name for the fifth year running — 80 Emmas were born in the province last year.
Compare this to 30 years ago, when Christopher and Jennifer were all the rage in Saskatchewan. Families’ choices are getting more diverse, though. While 1983 produced more than 300 Jennifers and 300 Christophers, the ranks of Emmas and Liams come nowhere close to those numbers.
“Parents are trying really hard to make their kids stand out — to give them an advantage,” says Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard.
A graph on babynamewizard. com shows the name Emma was hugely popular in the 1880s, then bottomed out in the 1960s, climbing back into circulation in the 1980s.
Liam was virtually unheard of before the 1970s, then spiked in the mid-2000s.
Wattenberg, who has been researching and writing about baby names for more than a decade, said people are fascinated with naming because it’s like a “fossil record of culture.”
We’re now in the midst of a “revolution” in baby naming as parents almost competitively pursue names that stand out, she said.
“There’s literally no such thing as a normal name anymore.”
The top names in Saskatchewan — Sophia, Olivia, Emily, Ava, and Carter, Noah, Lucas and Ethan — are echoed across other Canadian provinces and the U.S.
Zerek, as it turns out, is a classic Polish name, which Tricia said made his Polish grandfather particularly proud. His middle name is August.
Will Tricia and Leon have any more children with ‘Z’ names? Probably not, she says. “I don’t want to be one of those Duggar-like families who all have the same initials.”