Everyone on Earth likes to think they’re special and unique from the next person. That need for exclusive recognition began at a tender age, even before we are self-conscious; I think babies are not aware of themselves, though that’s not an established fact. Anyway, Amazon naming its voice assistant Alexa has made many newborn parents to shy away from using that once popular name for baby girls.
The popularity of Alexa took a nose-dive shortly after Amazon launched its Echo smart speakers, with the ‘Alexa’ wake-up command, which is now ubiquitous. According to Recode, in 2015, there were at least 6,050 baby girls named Alexa. Come 2017, the number of newborn baby girls named Alexa dropped by 33% to just 3,883.
Statistics by the Social Security Administration analysis by Philip Cohen, a sociology professor from the University of Maryland, the christening of baby girls Alexa dropped from 311 in every 100,000 newborn girls to 207 per 100,000 in 2017.
How did Amazon come to name its Voice Assistant, Alexa?
According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the name came by following a game he and his friends were playing back in 2016. They were playing a game they used to play back in elementary school when Bezos thought of the talking computer crew members in Star Trek series. The talking computer was called ‘Alexa,’ and that’s how Amazon Echo device got its ubiquitous name.
Siri, Apple’s digital assistant, also had the same effect on choice for baby girls’ names; though the number of parents naming their baby girls, Siri was significantly less, to begin with. As for ‘Hey, Google’ it is highly unlikely that it will have the same effect, as there is little chance of any parent, anywhere in the world naming their baby ‘Google.’
It is only Samsung who chose to use the boy’s name ‘Bixby,’ but that was just recently, and there is not yet enough data to indicate the effect it is having on newborn boy babies naming.