In a desperate attempt to bond with the teenagers in my family, I have become a devoted watcher of Gossip Girl. And as I take in the adventures of these upper-crusty New York teens, I can’t help but ruminate on their names.

　　What’s remarkable is not so much the names of the characters – BLAIR, the name of the series’ Queen Bee, is the only one that truly fits the mold – but the names of the actors who play them.

　　No fewer than five of the actors with major roles have names that are eighties-style upwardly-mobile surname-names, perfectly in tune with the style of the show:

　　BLAKE

　　CHACE

　　LEIGHTON

　　PENN

　　TAYLOR

　　(For the uninitiated, Blake, Leighton, and Taylor are girls, Chace and Penn are boys.)

　　Two other actors have names in the same vein, but not quite as stereotypical:

　　CONNOR

　　KELLY

　　Other names that fit this mold, now more commonly heard on twenty-something interns and junior editors and gallery assistants than on babies, include:

　　ASHLEY

　　BRITTANY

　　CAMERON

　　CARTER

　　COURTNEY

　　DEVIN and DEVON

　　JORDAN

　　LINDSAY and LINDSEY

　　MORGAN

　　TYLER

　　WHITNEY

　　The idea of these names was to impart a veneer of upper class style by appropriating a tony-sounding surname as a first. While the 1980s was one heyday of this trend, it wasn’t the first. Immigrant parents in the 1920s U.S. used British surnames for their sons in order to make them sound classy. Unfortunately, by now, these names sound anything but:

　　BURTON

　　IRVING

　　IRWIN

　　MARSHALL

　　MELVIN

　　MERVYN

　　MILTON

　　MONROE

　　MORRIS

　　SEYMOUR

　　SHELDON

　　SHERMAN

　　SHERWIN

　　SIDNEY

　　STANLEY

　　The use of the classy-sounding surname-as-first, for girls and for boys, is only getting more pervasive today. Some newer examples

　　ADDISON

　　AINSLEY

　　AVERY

　　EMERSON

　　EMERY

　　EVERETT

　　FINLAY and FINLEY

　　HARPER

　　HAYDEN

　　KENNEDY

　　LANE

　　LOGAN

　　MASON

　　PAISLEY

　　PARKER

　　PAYTON/PEYTON

　　PRESTON

　　QUINN

　　REAGAN and REGAN

　　REESE

　　ROWAN

　　SAWYER

　　SKYLAR and SKYLER (and even the original SCHUYLER)TEAGAN