A child named "Federal Constitution" in 1790. "States Rights" appearing across the antebellum South. The spelling "Meagan" surging in Reagan-supporting areas. What do these naming choices tell us about American political identity?
Names as Political Weathervanes
Urbatsch's central insight is deceptively simple but profoundly revealing: naming patterns are weathervanes for political attitudes. When Massachusetts parents named their child "Federal Constitution" in 1790, they weren't just being eccentric - they were documenting their enthusiasm for the newly ratified founding document. When "States Rights" appeared as a given name throughout the South in the nineteenth century, it mapped the intensity of secessionist sentiment more accurately than any poll could.
The book traces how political naming extends far beyond obvious commemorations of presidents or leaders. It encompasses:
- Ideological labels becoming personal names (Federal Constitution, States Rights)
- Presidential surname popularity tracking electoral success and national crises
- Sibling naming patterns revealing household political loyalties (McKinley's brother disproportionately named Roosevelt)
- Spelling variations correlating with regional political preferences (Meagan vs. Megan in Reagan-supporting areas)
- Dramatic surges and crashes in names like Hillary, mapping public opinion in real-time
Why This Methodology Matters
Traditional political history relies on elections, speeches, newspapers, and surveys. But these sources have limitations—they capture elite opinion, public performance, or self-reported attitudes. Naming choices reveal something different: revealed preferences at the most intimate level.
When parents name a child, they're making a statement about identity, values, and aspirations that will last a lifetime. They're often unaware they're participating in broader political patterns. This makes aggregated naming data extraordinarily valuable - it captures genuine sentiment without the distortions of social desirability bias or political performance.
As one reviewer notes, Urbatsch "creates a masterpiece of innovative, nontraditional social science research" by using this unconventional data source to gauge public opinion across American political history.
What the Book Illuminates
The study opens new windows onto historical questions across multiple dimensions:
Race and ethnicity: How do immigrant communities signal assimilation or resistance through naming? When do minority names enter mainstream popularity, and what does that timing reveal about integration?
Gender: How do political moments shape gendered naming conventions? What happens when women enter politics - do their names become viable for children in ways previously unimaginable?
Nationalism: When does patriotic naming surge? How do wars, threats, and national triumphs manifest in birth registries?
Religion: How do religious revivals, secularization, and denominational conflicts appear in biblical versus secular name preferences?
Regional identity: What do North-South, urban-rural, or coastal-interior naming differences reveal about persistent political divides?
The book doesn't just document these patterns - it interprets them, connecting naming trends to broader questions of identity, public sentiment, and political behavior across American history.
From Federal Constitution to Hillary
The examples Urbatsch provides are striking in their range. "Federal Constitution" (1790) captures revolutionary-era nation-building enthusiasm. "States Rights" documents antebellum sectional conflict. The McKinley-Roosevelt sibling pattern reveals how presidential succession shaped household naming within single families.
The "Meagan/Megan" spelling correlation with Reagan support is particularly fascinating - it suggests political identity can influence even orthographic preferences, with parents unconsciously gravitating toward spellings that echo admired leaders.
The Hillary trajectory is perhaps most dramatic: surging when the Clintons emerged on the political scene, then crashing spectacularly as polarization intensified. This single name's rise and fall documents changing attitudes toward political wives, feminism, and partisan identity with remarkable precision.
Names as Historical Archive
One reviewer observes that the book "insightfully demonstrates how, across centuries, parents have connected their children's identities to political contexts through the act of naming." This isn't arbitrary - names function as mirrors of social and political landscapes.
Birth registries become archives of public opinion. The Social Security Death Master File transforms into a massive database documenting which historical moments moved ordinary Americans enough to commemorate them in their children's names. Census records reveal which communities embraced or rejected particular political identities through naming.
Creative, Insightful, Entertaining
What makes The Politics of Names accessible beyond specialist audiences is its combination of rigorous methodology with compelling storytelling. As another reviewer notes, it's "creative, insightful, and entertaining throughout" - rare praise for academic political science.
The book isn't dry data analysis. It's about real parents making real choices in specific historical moments, their decisions aggregating into patterns that reveal collective consciousness. Every unusual political name has a story: parents so inspired by a leader, event, or idea that they permanently inscribed it onto their child's identity.
For Historians, Political Scientists, and Parents
This study matters for multiple audiences:
Historians gain new methodology for tracking public opinion in eras before modern polling, revealing sentiment among populations who left few written records.
Political scientists discover innovative approaches to measuring political identity and partisan alignment beyond traditional survey instruments.
Sociologists find empirical evidence for how identity construction operates at the most intimate familial level.
Parents might recognize themselves in these patterns - or become more conscious of how their "personal" naming choices participate in larger political currents.
The Bigger Picture
The Politics of Names contributes to growing recognition that everyday decisions - where we live, what we buy, how we name our children - are increasingly sorted by political identity in America. Urbatsch documents that this isn't new; it's been happening since the nation's founding.
But the research also suggests something hopeful: naming patterns change. Names that surge can crash. Communities that embrace certain identities can shift. The birth registry documents not just polarization but also periods of convergence, shared enthusiasm, and cross-partisan admiration for leaders and ideas.
In an era of intense political division, understanding how Americans have always used names to signal identity - while also sometimes transcending partisan boundaries - offers perspective on both continuity and change in American political culture.
The Politics of Names: Attitudes, Identity, and the Naming of Children in American History
R. Urbatsch
Columbia University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7312/urba22168
eBook ISBN: 9780231565080
Available through Columbia University Press and distributed internationally by De Gruyter
For scholars interested in political behavior, American history, onomastics, or the sociology of identity, this book offers essential new methodology and compelling historical insights. For anyone who's ever wondered why certain names suddenly become popular - or why they chose the name they did - it provides fascinating answers.
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