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Ella Rae, Mark Wahlberg and Rhea Durham out on 9/13 right before their third child was born. Credit: revolutionpix/Fame Pictures
For all the questionably creative celebrity baby names, there are plenty of celebrities who chose traditional, well-known names for their children. Mark Wahlberg had his third child with his fiance, model Rhea Durham, on September 16. Life and Style has the details of the baby’s name, and he’s simply named Brendan Joseph. Mark’s other two children are Ella Rae, 5, and Michael, two and a half.
According to the cool tool at the Baby Name Wizard, which tracks the most popular 1,000 names according to the US Social Security Administration, the name Brendan was most popular in the 1990s when it peaked at number 123 among popular boy’s names. Last year it was about the 200th most popular name.
Michael remained the most popular boy’s name from the 1960s until around 2000, when it dropped to number two. Ella has been in the top 50 most popular girl’s names for the last decade or so.
I also checked the popularity of a lot of the celebrity child names that are unique, but which might be common enough to fall on this graph, like Apple, Heaven, Brooklyn, Ireland, and Willow. Apple doesn’t fall on the chart, but Heaven, Brooklyn, Ireland, and Willow, which are all semi-decent names, don’t appear until after the 1990s and come up as huge spikes as the names increase in popularity. The name with the tiniest and spikiest spike is - can you guess - Shiloh.
Here’s the applet if you’d like to check some names. It just launches their website when you hit “go.” Here’s a FAQ describing how it works.
Popularity of names starting with BRENDAN
[I got some of the baby name ideas from this article in the Telegraph]
Written by Celebitchy
Posted in Babies, Mark Wahlberg
6 Responses to “Mark Wahlberg’s new son is named Brendan”
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She really IS gorgeous, why have I not noticed this before? Joseph is one of my all-time fav boy names so I’d have preferred Joseph Brendan, but it’s still lovely.
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Thank goodness, somebody who names their kids normal names.
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My name has never been in the top 1000 but a variation of it is really popular. My name was supposed to be the girl version a boys name but I guess it never caught. However, I do see tons of girls with the boys version. Meh.
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Lovely decent name! Although it’s a very traditional Irish name (St. Brendan the Navigator allegedly discovered America even before Leif Ericsson and related Vikings), but it doesn’t seem to have become popular again as a first Christian name until the mid-20th century (it may still have been taken as a Confirmation name)
At least, I’ve not noticed it as a common name when looking at World War I records.
And it’s not the tooth-wincing “Brandon” version either. (for those readers who have the name/are related to the name or have called their children that name, I still don’t care for it
)
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What ?! Not Nigel Australopithecus Fruitenhammer the Third or some other outstandingly goofy fruity freakin’ Hollywood name guaranteeing a childhood of taunts and beatings ? Unheard of !! Get with the program, Mark !!
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Man, Rhea is gorgeous. *That* is a name I love, actually - Rhea. So pretty.
I think Mark & Rhea’s baby name choices are fine - Mark esp. strikes me as quiet and traditional in his family life. And perhaps Michael and Brendan were family names - he comes from an enormous Boston Irish-Catholic family, after all.
Ella is a little cutie, but I think that name is played out, esp. in celeb-world.
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