Metadish, Fresh from NYC

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A completely made up name, Nevaeh, which is Heaven spelled backwards has set the record for the fastest growing name ever. And it seems to have come out of nowhere.

In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda.

The spectacular rise of Nevaeh (commonly pronounced nah-VAY-uh) has little precedent, name experts say. They watched it break into the top 1,000 of girls’ names in 2001 at No. 266, the third-highest debut ever. Four years later it cracked the top 100 with 4,457 newborn Nevaehs, having made the fastest climb among all names in more than a century, the entire period for which the Social Security Administration has such records.

Nevaeh is not in the Bible or any religious text. It is not from a foreign language. It is not the name of a celebrity, real or fictional.

Nevaeh is Heaven spelled backward.

Luckily, my parents favorite word was semaj, so I kind of lucked out when they decided to just write it backwards and stick it on my birth certificate. I’m not saying I so much popularized the name James as much as I probably gave it a pretty bad reputation.

And if It’s a Boy, Will It Be Lleh? [NYT]

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