Overused and Underused Character Names on Soaps

[Faulkner]

Oh I remember the “Erica” generation. In my all-black rural Southern high school in the late ‘90s, the popular names were Monique, Nicole, Amber, and Lawanda.

[Khan]

Wait, Lawanda?  Was there a late-'90's burst of popularity for Aunt Esther or something?

 

Saying "the 'Erica generation" puts in my mind the image of Susan Lucci, in her best Erica Kane getup, saluting a large room filled with women also named Erica, who are holding up their tubes of mascara in solidarity.

[Faulkner]

Yeah, I know. It was a very small town, and some of these names got passed down through families. But sooo many Lawandas at my school.

[j swift]

I find it remarkable that were women nicknamed "Cricket" on both Y&R and ATWT.  It does not seem like a common nickname.

 

I can think of tons of Sean/Shawn's and Becca/Rebecca's but only one Raven.

[SFK]

 

Plus, their last names were Montgomery and Blair. I went to Montgomery Blair High School and my friend thought I was trolling her when I mentioned Y&R's Cricket Montgomery (my mistake). ATWT's Cricket was played by Wednesday Adams herself, Lisa Loring.

 

Lol, my friend and I were really into Erika Slezak and Erica Kane and we have a long-running joke about a girl we saw on the news named Ericka ("Her mother couldn't decide!").

 

And more recently, a meme:

 

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I knew plenty of Crystals but never spelled like Dynasty's Krystle. My brother's high school gf Alexis was born before Dynasty but I knew a boy a few grades below me named Alexis and I may have been *a little* jealous. I have also encountered a couple Fallons and Sables in adulthood, but never a Bliss.

[Paul Raven]

Following in the footsteps of

Leslie (Brooks)

Lauren (Fenmore)

Phyllis (Summer)

Victoria (Reed)

in using a family surname as their child's first name, some other Y&R characters who could do the same if a baby came along

 

Chris and Paul - Blair Williams

 

Hilary and Devon -  Curtis Hamilton

 

Sharon and Nick - Collin Newman

 

Cane and Lily - Winter Ashby

 

Tricia and Ryan - Dennison McNeil

 

Neil and Karen - Taylor Winters

 

Patty and Jack - William Abbott

 

Mari Jo and Jack - Mason Abbott

 

 

[SFK]

Daimler would've been a perfect name for yet another little badass child of Blair's. She dropped the name and adopted Cramer, but it would've been a nice tribute to the folks who raised her.

[Ryan Chamberlain]

 

That makes me sad now that Hevon having a chance of having a kid is gone. Cause, Curtis Hamilton is a really good name. 

[All My Shadows]

One of the girls in my older brother's friend group from high school is named Sable (of course, everyone pronounces it "SAY-buh"), and he hung out with that group right around the time I was getting into the primetime soaps and learning about them, so I always had to fight the urge to ask her if she was named after Miss Sabella.

I once went down the rabbit hole of tracking certain names to see if soaps helped make them popular, and it's surprising how much correlation there is. There's no proof for causation, but I'm pretty sure The Edge of Night made Nicole a popular name in the 70s. Tons of parents named their kids after Erica Kane's daughters Bianca and Kendall.

[SFK]

Bianca is most famously from Shakespeare but boy does it just SMACK of quintessential eighties snob. 

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I'm reminded of the Mr. Belvedere where Heather wants to be called Bianca (of course Angela keeps calling her Binaca), and Beverly Hills Teens with the raven-haired villainess Bianca.

[ReddFoxx]

I have mentioned this before, but I was named after Chase Gioberti on Falcon Crest (mine is spelled slightly different).

[SteelCity]

It seemed like in the 90s, all the Black characters were Jamal and Keesha.

I was in Spanish class with a Krystle, and I used to always tell her that her mom had to be Dynasty fan. She never got it. Bliss always seemed like a porn star or a stripper.

[Faulkner]

I knew a lot of Jamals and Keeshas/Keishas in real life, but yeah, soaps overdid it. I also knew a lot of black guys named Demarcus and Deangelo and Devante. Tons of Jareds, Josephs, Antonios, and Brandons. Just as there were plenty of girls like LaQuana, Lakeisha, and Shonda as well as Victoria, Katrina/Trina, Veronica, Christina, Bridget, and Krystal/Crystal.

[Titus Andronicus]

I know a handful of individuals named after soap characters. Including Young Dr. Malone, when it was still a radio soap.

 

How many other Romans have there been?

 

 

[SteelCity]

There's a nurse at the local hospital named after the titular character on "Portia Faces Life."