The popularity of the name “Alexa” as a choice for baby girls has dropped significantly in recent years. It’s down 33 percent since 2015, Recode reports. Which, not so coincidentally, is when Amazon started selling the Echo, a smart-home device voiced by an AI named Alexa. As in you have to say “Alexa” every time you want to command the bot to do anything.
People already named Alexa have complained in the past about the struggles of having their name co-opted by Amazon. “I always liked my name, until Amazon gave it to a robot, ” NYU graduate Alexa Sussman told The Wall Street Journal back in 2017. She referenced a time her dad asked her for some water and the family’s Echo chimed in offering to order a case of Fiji bottles. Back in 2015, 6,050 baby girls in the United States were given the name Alexa. (That’s 311 for every 100,000 female babies.) In 2017, the total number of Alexas born was just 3,883.
Of course, even if you opt to name your baby Alexa in 2018 know that it could always be worse. There’s a woman in New Jersey named Alexa Seary — it’s pronounced like Siri — who, clearly, can’t live in a house with any devices from Amazon or Apple.
