The folks over at Scrap Car Comparison, who apparently have a lot of free time on their hands while waiting for someone to pull in with a scrap car, decided it would be fun to scan the American Social Security Administration’s rolls of baby names, and those of the U.K.’s Office of National Statistics, to find the countries’ most- and least-popular names for newborns — that are also names of cars. The idea of doing the search, we should add, is clearly a better idea than actually naming a tender young human being after a hunk of metal.
In some of these cases, however, it’s not fair to say the babies were named after cars. The Hudson Motor Co. went out of business in 1954, so even though Hudson tops the list of boy names, those kids were not named for cars that nobody of child-rearing age remembers. And Tucker built just about 50 cars in a blink of the eye in the 1940s, so that name was bestowed by people honoring the MAGA mouthpiece (you can assume those on the other side of the political fence would avoid it). But can you say these kiddos share a name with a car? Sure.
On the girls’ side, the top name is Nova. Probably best to bless your child with the name for a dazzling interstellar event, rather than a 1960s economy car.
It’s doubtful Maverick was named for a little pickup truck, but rather for a blockbuster Tom Cruise movie. That said, Maverick was a radio callsign; military aviators are usually tagged with callsigns that are a retelling of some screw-up they made. It wasn’t the name his parents gave him.
Cooper is one of those last-names-as-first-names. Coopers were tradesmen who made wheels long before there were cars. Now that seems solidly vehicular.
Boys named Lincoln might well be named after the Great Emancipator. And the genesis for naming a girl Genesis might well be the book of Genesis, not a Korean luxury car. But only the parents can know for sure.
Leon is Spanish for lion, which is why the Spanish car company SEAT named a car Leon. But more important, boys named Leon are probably named Leon because Leon was already a legit given name.
Anyway, here’s the list of most popular car-adjacent baby names:
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Most common car names for boys |
Most common car names for girls |
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Maverick |
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Cheyenne |
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Mercedes |
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Now, the list of least-popular names, below, is where things get weird:
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Most unique car names for boys |
Most unique car names for girls |
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Yes, there was the Studebaker Avanti. The word means “after you” in Italian. It was a strange name for a strange car, though maybe Avanti drivers are great at using the zipper merge. Will Avanti boys have good manners and open doors for people?
And we’re not sure why anyone would want to name their child Wraith, after a ghostly apparition that hovers near a deathbed. Spooky! Good luck with that one, kids. It’s a little more subtle than Ghost or Phantom, at least. Maybe the parents were hoping for a girl they could name Dawn.
Nine girls named Hemi? That could actually have been a decent boy’s name.
Got a car/baby name you wish was on these lists? Nominate it in the comments below, or better yet, give it to your kid.