Is Jersey City mayor trying too hard with this baby name?

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and wife Jaclyn just added to their family. Already the parents of their boy Jaxon and daughter Stassi, they just welcomed to the world their little sister at 5 pounds and 7 ounces on Thursday.

On the count of three…one, two, three…awwwww.

Yes, they named their second little girl Sage.

Some will say names like Stassi, Jaxon (at least spelled this way) and Sage are trying a little too hard to be hip. Are Fulops' names as progressive as his politics? When I heard the name Sage I wasn’t sure if it was for a boy or girl, but plenty of names are like that.

Turns out it’s both. I looked up the popularity of these particular first names on a Social Security site.

Sage for boys ranked 391 nationally last year. But for girls? 144! It’s growing fast in popularity. Just 3 years prior it was 279.

Stassi is the most unusual name of the Fulops’ children. That didn’t even rank in the top 1,000 on the Social Security site and in fact in 2021 there were only 23 babies born in all of the United States named Stassi.

Jaxon however, even with this spelling, is 67. (The more traditional Jackson is 23.) It may blow your mind that last year there were more babies named Jaxon than Jason. Jason ranked 145.

Names are evolving. Now I’m not ready to throw support to the name Elon Musk and Grimes picked for their firstborn…X Æ A-Xii.

That kid is never, ever, EVER finding a keychain with their name.

But unusual names are becoming more accepted. So much so Sage is hardly unusual. And who would I be to talk? I agreed to naming my 3rd child Atticus. (Think “To Kill A Mockingbird.")

As Shakespeare wrote, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and a baby by any other name with still cost you two years of sleep.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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