Thanks to Amazon, many parents won't name their kids Alexa

You won’t be having any coworkers called Alexa anytime soon. According to new Social Security data crunched by University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen, Alexa became an increasingly unpopular baby name after Amazon released its personal virtual assistant Alexa in 2015.

After its release, the popularity of the name dramatically dropped off. Cohen found its popularity dropped by 21.3% in 2016, and another 19.5% last year.

After computer Alexa, fewer human Alexas

Since Amazon Echo was first released, it has introduced us to Alexa, the virtual assistant we can command with a simple, “Alexa, tell me today’s weather.”


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Through Amazon Echo’s smart speaker, we may have learned to think of the name Alexa as one befitting a robot, not a human.

The year of Alexa’s debut, 6,050 babies were named Alexa. In 2017, that number has fallen to 3,883. Maybe, parents don’t want a name that we know can be bossed around? Whatever the reason, the dropoff in Alexa’s popularity shows us how technology can influence what should be in a name.