Baby Emma, David or Elizabeth? Not for American parents Caitlin and Luke McNeal.
Rather than naming their children after grandparents, biblical figures or the British monarchy, the couple chose the names of places that hold meaningful travel memories for them.
“Kinsale was when we lived in Ireland, and we vacationed in Kinsale and fell in love with it,” said Caitlin. “Keeneland is from Kentucky, the first place we ever vacationed together to watch the horse races.”
And lastly there’s Sabi — “from the Sabi Sands in South Africa, where we went on our first solo vacay without Kinsale.”
The McNeals are part of a growing trend of choosing baby names based on travel destinations.
The McNeal family — Keeneland, Luke, Sabi, Caitlin and Kinsale.
Source: Caitlin McNeal
The popularity of “travel-inspired” names increased 14% between 2000 and 2020, according a study by the luggage storage app Bounce. The company compared a short list of destination names and travel-related words with data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, it said.
The results show overlap in baby name choices in both countries. However, the trend of naming children after countries and cities is more pronounced in the United States than the United Kingdom, even after accounting for differences in population sizes, the study shows.
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