I think Harry Potter has increased the name's usability because I don't think most people (at least in the U.S.) would have a clue how to pronounce it otherwise.
I definitely agree with this. It wouldn't really be familiar in a broad sense without the HP association, but it's such a strong one that I think it definitely takes away from the usability, so those two forces are probably counteracting each other somewhat. Out of all the HP names, I think Hermione would be one of the best candidates for being used more, but it's still not even in the top 1,000 in the U.S., which is a bit surprising to me. All of this just makes for an interesting story to me - one of the reasons I decided to do a poll and see what others thought. :)
There were only 47 Hermione's last year, which surprised me, honestly. I would've expected more. (Though, in the year before HP was released in the US, there were less than five, so if you're looking at it from that perspective it's definitely been used more often!)
I remember, when my sixth grade teacher started reading the book out loud to us, she pronounced Hermione "herm-ee-own" for a while. Then a friend of hers eventually corrected her. Haha. :)
Yeah, strictly percentage-wise, that's obviously a big jump, but it's still not a very large absolute number. :)
Out of curiosity, how do you have access to the exact numbers of births below the top 1,000? Laura Wattenberg's the only other person I've seen quoting those statistics. :p
This. It's gone from a bizarre, obscure, unpronounceable name to a name that might still be unusual, but is familiar and has positive associations with virtually everyone.
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Date: 2010-12-09 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-09 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-09 02:53 am (UTC)I remember, when my sixth grade teacher started reading the book out loud to us, she pronounced Hermione "herm-ee-own" for a while. Then a friend of hers eventually corrected her. Haha. :)
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Date: 2010-12-15 05:39 am (UTC)Out of curiosity, how do you have access to the exact numbers of births below the top 1,000? Laura Wattenberg's the only other person I've seen quoting those statistics. :p
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Date: 2010-12-16 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-16 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-16 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-09 02:20 pm (UTC)