Following the release of Barbie, the movie babynames.com has seen a significant increase in the number of searches for the names ‘Barbie’ and ‘Ken.’
Babynames.com is a popular website for brainstorming children’s names, but it also reports data about the popularity of names over time, details the names’ meanings, and lists songs that the name has been used in, among other things.
There have been 300 precent more searches for ‘Barbie’ and 200 percent more searches for ‘Ken,’ babynames.com told TMZ. This may indicate that more parents are interested in the name for their future children, but it could also be driven by fans who want to know if and when the names fell out of style.
It’s mentioned in the movie that Barbie‘s creator, Ruth Handler, named her after her own daughter, Barbra. Ken was named after Handler’s son, Kenneth.
Statistics Canada collects data about the names assigned to individuals at birth. Similar data for the United States population is collected by its Social Security Administration.
While Statistics Canada did not collect information for individuals named ‘Barbie,’ it did for those named ‘Barbara,’ ‘Ken,’ and ‘Kenneth.’ The popularity of all three names has decreased over time.
‘Ken’ has been the least popular, only representing more than 0.02% of baby boys in one year: 1994. After all, he’s just Ken.
Image credit: Statistics Canada
Image credit: Statistics Canada
Image credit: Statistics Canada
This isn’t the only cultural impact made by the Barbie movie.
The ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon prompted Cineplex to make record profits on their opening weekend. We later learned that Cineplex had begun quietly charging more for tickets to those two movies.
In addition, Barbie prompted more people to buy pink paint, stressing a supply chain that was already strained and leading to global shortages.
Image credit: Warner Bros.
Source: babynames.com Via: TMZ
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