Jimmy, Dakota, Sierra, Denali and Tahoe. What do these names have in common? These are names of people and names of cars, SUV's and pickup trucks to be exact. In this top-20 post we present the most popular names of people that are also names of cars. Some of these names wont come as surprise, like Porsche and Mercedes but others, such as Morgan or Martin, are less likely to be associated with cars.
Are people naming their kids after cars?
Determining the name of a new car model is an art. Each manufacturer seems to take their own approach to selecting brand and model names. Luxury car manufacturers seem to prefer names that sound like technical designations or acronyms such as the Infinity Q70L, the BMW M3 or the Morgan Aero8. These types of names are rarely if ever used as people's names.
SUVs and pickup-trucks are often named after mountain ranges, lakes and other natural landmarks, like Denali, Sierra and Tacoma. These types of names tend to be associated with ruggedness and natural beauty. Some feel that they are used to associate a "greenness" to a class of vehicles that is often perceived as damaging to the environment. The traits of ruggedness and natural beauty are also desirable to describe people so it is common to see these names used as people's first names.
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Some manufacturer's want to portray their heritage, many brands are named after their founders, Aston Martin, Morgan, Ferrari and even Honda are just few examples. At times, manufacturers release special models named after key figures in the company's or industry's history. A good example of this is the Mercedes Maybach, a flagship model that encompasses all the luxury and technology that the engineers could fit into one model. The model was named after Wilhelm Maybach who was technical director of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft in the early nineteen hundreds and a key figure in the production of the first Mercedes cars.
Some companies adhere to strict naming practices, the British company Lotus only chooses names that begin with the letter "E", Elise, Esprit, Elan. Others follow market trends, in the past Porsche selected numbers such as 911, 928, 944 to name their models. Their recent models were given names such Macan, Cayenne and Panamera.
Many of the practices and considerations described above for selecting the names of car models or brands are also used when choosing a person's name. So it should come as no surprise that these names are often shared. It is unlikely, but not unheard of, that people are specifically naming their kids after cars. They are simply choosing some of the same names.
There are many more model and brand names than those that appear in the top 20 lists. So to help you find them all, we created a look-up tool where one can select the brand and model name of a favorite car to see how popular the name is as person's first or last name. We have included the all the brands available in the US, from the past and present, from the most common ones, Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler, to the more exotic ones, Lamborghini, Ferrari and Bugatti. We have also included some obscure and exotic brands like Morgan of England and Fisker, a brand of electric sports cars located in California.