Name In Spotlight: Maxwell

Well it had to be posted really... For those of you unaware about celebrity baby names, you might be taken by surprise, but Maxwell is on the spotlight because of its usage as a girl name.

When Lindsay Sloane named her daughter Maxwell, I was ready to ignore it as one of those outrageous celebrity baby names. But now Jessica Simpson has also given her daughter the first name Maxwell (with Drew as a middle name believe it or not), so I thought I had to post something on this issue...

Maxwell is an old male name of English origin meaning "from the great well". Looking at the SSA lists, Maxwell has never ever charted in the top1000 for girls, so the "robbing" of this name to the pink side is definitely just a 2012 movement. We will have to wait and see if this will have an effect or not in the 2012 ranking, I personally think it won't become unisex - although there should be an increase in popularity, maybe even debuting for the first time for girls. As a boys name, Maxwell has charted since 1882, and it sits at #134 for 2010, pretty high up the ranking.



Now I get the appeal of using masculine nicknames like Max or Maxie on a girl (the latter less so), since it's cute and edgy. However on the girls birth certificate, there should be a longer feminine name. What's wrong with Maxine or Maxima? I know in Jessica Simpson's case, both Maxwell and Drew are family names - but why not wait til she has a boy to use them? For example, say she wanted to honor family members named Rose and Cynthia. Would she name her son Cynthia Rose? I don't think so. Again, it's a case of "anything goes" when it comes to naming girls, and there really are no limits it seems.

On another website I read an intersting comment that said "someone had to steal it first", and it made me think, that's totally true. Sure, Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Sloane are not the first people alive to name a girl Maxwell, but they are in the celebrity world, giving it enormous exposure as a female name. I mean, no one thinks of Meredith, Shirley or Kimberly as male names anymore, but someone had to "steal" them first. All of those names became hot choices for girls around the country, and nowadays are almost exclusively female. Will the name Maxwell have the same fate?

What are your views on this issue?