Oaklee, McKay, Kayleigh, Brayden, the list of "Utah names" goes on and on. The state, specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints population, is known as giving oddly-spelled, creative and sometimes downright ridiculous names.
Is this stereotype accurate, and if so, why might it be a prominent part of the culture? Several years ago, Cleveland Evans looked specifically at Utah in an onomastics (the study of names) context in order to better answer these questions.
Evans is an emeritus professor of psychology at Bellevue University, and he says that onomastics is “something that’s fascinated [him] for a very long time.” He was president of the American Name Society and continues to write columns on names for the Omaha World-Herald.
In 2023, Evans published research comparing Utah naming trends to those of nearby Colorado. He “figured it’s another mountain state so it should have some similarities in culture,” while contrasting with Utah’s majority-LDS population.
Evans counted instances when names in Utah or Colorado exceeded the national average. He found that “there’s always way more … in Utah than there are in Colorado.”
In other words, Utah stuck out as having more unique names based on that metric. However, there were also many names in common between the two states.
“It’s almost part of [Utah] culture,” Evans said. However, he noted that “it might be a bit more accurate if you say Utah has a subculture.” Utah names aren’t as consistently different as some might believe, but they hint at nuanced cultural differences.
However small those differences may be, the trained observer can spot them. Cari Clark and her husband, Wes, moved from Utah to the East Coast for work. They found that they could accurately identify people from the Intermountain West.
Clark recalled meeting a woman named “O’Donna.”
“She’s gotta be LDS, she’s gotta be from Utah,” Clark said. Sure enough, a chat with a mutual friend confirmed her hypothesis. Since then, she and her husband have been accumulating real Utah names on their website.
This begs the question, what's in a name? Furthermore, how and why do these names come about?
Mallory Pace of Saratoga Springs is a mother of five young children. She explained that she and her husband viewed naming their children as a task that transcends putting something on a paper birth certificate.
“It was kind of a spiritual experience,” Pace said. “You knew when you landed on [the name], it felt right.”
BYU linguistics professor Dallin D. Oaks, who was lead editor on a book featuring Evan’s study, clarified that “the idea of names carrying a special power goes back really far in the history of humans.”
Many might associate a certain name with people looking a certain way, or having a certain attitude.
“Imagine the people who have had the misfortune of having the name ‘Karen,’ which is a perfectly good, wonderful name,” he said. “Now, it’s become almost a [negative] descriptive word.”
Clark added that the naming trend may also stem from a desire to be different in what can sometimes seem like a homogenous religious community.
“When you come from a great big family, you want something that distinguishes you,” she said.
Pace said that her children — Ryker, Kai, Briggs, Nash and Lucy — don’t have “cookie-cutter names,” but they “aren’t odd either.” However, she laments the fact that some names have become too trendy and lose their original edge.
She hoped her son, Kai, would be unique, but has found he has several classmates with the same name.
“I don’t love it,” she said.
Evans offered a final reason why Utah may appear to have a unique baby-naming culture. It may not be a distinct difference in state culture, but rather, a difference in timing compared to other states.
“Utah is almost like an early warning system for a lot of new fashions,” he said. “They seem to hit Utah first.” He speculates that what begins in Utah slowly spreads to other areas of the country like an earthquake’s shockwave.
While it’s impossible to definitively say whether or not Utah names are truly different, strong sentiments of spirituality and individualism undoubtedly influence name preferences.
Clark offered some final advice for parents considering a trendy or unique name for their child:
“Please, think about it before you name that kid … open the back door and yell it a few times because that’s how it’s going to be heard for the next 18 years.”