list of girls names on page 227 was drawn. Or considering all the Brittanys, Britneys, Brittanis, Brittanies, Brittneys, and Brittnis you encounter these days, you might think of Britney Spears. But she is in fact a symptom, not a cause, of the Brittany/Britney/Brittani/ Brittanie/Brittney/Brittni explosion. With the most common spell-   ing of the name, Brittany, at number eighteen among high-end fami- lies and number five among low-end families, it is surely approaching its pull date. Decades earlier, Shirley Temple was similarly a symptom of the Shirley boom, though she is often now remembered as its cause. (It should also be noted that many girls names, including Shirley, Carol, Leslie, Hilary, Renee, Stacy, and Tracy began life as boys names, but girls names almost never cross over to boys.) So it isnt famous people who drive the name game. It is the family just a few blocks over, the one with the bigger house and newer car. The kind of families that were the first to call their daughters Amber or Heather and are now calling them Lauren or Madison. The kind of families that used to name their sons Justin or Brandon and are now calling them Alexander or Benjamin. Parents are reluctant to poach a name from someone too near-family members or close friends-but many parents, whether they realize it or not, like the sound of names that sound "successful." But as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents begin to abandon it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower-end parents may not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower-end parents, meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper-end parents have broken in. So the implication is clear: the parents of all those Alexandras, Lau- rens, Katherines, Madisons, and Rachels should not expect the cachet to last much longer. Those names are already on their way to overex- posure. Where, then, will the new high-end names come from? It wouldnt be surprising to find them among the "smartest" girls