Does having an outside-the-box name make you feel happily unique or woefully unusual?
Jenna Bush Hager discussed the agony of never finding her name on an item at the airport gift shop with guest co-host Scarlett Johansson Jan. 22 on “Jenna & Friends.”
The name Jenna became more well known in the ‘90s, Jenna said, but growing up, she could never find items with her name on them.
According to the Social Security Administration, the name Jenna was popular in the 1980s and 1990s. It began it’s declining in 2002 and in 2023 it was the 629th most popular baby girl’s name in the US.
Scarlett, on the other hand, was the 948th most popular name for a baby girl in the U.S. in 1992 but it began surging in popularity in 2002, just as Jenna started to decline. From 2015 to 2013, Scarlett stayed in the top 20 baby girls’ names on average. In 2023, it landed at No. 17.
Baby name expert Colleen Slagan tells TODAY.com that after hundreds of chats with baby name clients, the data reflects what she’s hearing.
Jenna “had its moment” and is “quite uncommon” today, she says. On the other hand, “Scarlett was super rare in the ‘80s. It didn’t even rank in the top 1,000. It’s now the 17th most popular name, maybe thanks to Scarlett herself influencing culture!”
But when Johansson was growing up, “there were definitely no Scarletts,” she said.
“And my twin brother, Hunter — certainly there were no Hunters,” Johansson shared. “But a couple of years ago, we were in Montauk out in Long Island and we were at one of those surf shop places, and there were two mini-keychain surfboards. One said Scarlett and then we found Hunter, and I legit think we cried. We did cry a little bit.”
“Did you cry enough to buy them?” Jenna asked.
“Of course we bought them!” Johansson said. “We bought them and we looked at each other and it was like, ‘They see us.’”
“We’re seen!” echoed Jenna with joy. “It was a big moment.”
