There are worse names to have than Archie and Karl

Everybody gets one, but few ever get to pick it themselves.

No, I’m not talking about your nose here. I’m talking about your name.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle surprised the world when they went and named their first son after a comic book character. Who saw that one coming? Apparently some British lady had it pegged. She laid out 120 quid with her local bookie and came away with 18,000. Seems the royal chap shares a birthday with her own grandson Archie.

The young man may end up embracing the name Archie, especially with a dad named Harry, but I assure you he’s proud he won’t have that Markle moniker tagged to the end of it.

The idea to write about names germinated fully when I received an email from the Social Security Administration releasing the top 10 boys and girls names of 2018.

Since I am a former editor, I was aware that SSA had been sending out this press release every year for decades. What I wasn’t aware of, however, is that they reserve a section of the federal government website for statistics about names. The function is pretty good actually. I’m just not too sure about the accuracy of the stats.

For instance, when I plug the name Karl into the database I come up with 148th most popular in my birth year of 1959. If they had named me Carl I would have jumped to 54th most popular that year.

The story goes, my dad wanted to name me Bucky, after a friend, and a compromise was eventually reached. I would be Karl Wayne Terry so that our initials would be the same. Even though I share a first name with the German author of the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, I bet the name Karl was a whole lot more popular in Germany, even in 1959.

According to the SSA website, if I had been named Carl with a C, I would have made the top 100 names of the last 100 years at No. 63. As it stands currently, Archie and Karl with a K don’t make the list. Something tells me Archie is going to make up a lot of ground over the next couple of decades though.

My middle name Wayne is there, barely, at No. 90. My wife’s name Carol, my dad’s name Keith, my mother’s name Judy and my brother’s name Jeff are all there. My sister’s name Kathy, spelled with a K, didn’t make it though and neither did Cathy. Her middle name Denise did make the cut.

Other given names in my family and my wife’s not making the top 100 were both of my grandmothers, Ereth and Musette (actually they wouldn’t show up at all in a search). Carol’s dad Levon or her mom Irene didn’t make it either.

So what are the top five names for New Mexico for 2018? For the boys, in order: Noah, Liam, Elijah, Mateo and Logan. For the girls: Isabella, Sophia, Mia, Emma and Olivia. None of them too common for my generation.

Maybe Archie and Karl aren’t so bad after all.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]