The Kardashians Have Started A Lot Of Trends, But None Like Kourtney’s

Baby name popularity fluctuating with pop culture is nothing new. Arya skyrocketed on the baby girl charts after Game of Thrones, and many boys born in the ‘90s were named after Brad Pitt’s Tristan in Legends of the Fall. But when it comes to celebrity baby naming trends, the reaction tends to be more hit or miss. After all, despite the entirety of 2004 being about Gwyneth Paltrow naming her baby Apple, that sweet little moniker has never hit the top 1000 baby names for girls. Neither has Bronx — after Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz’s son Bronx Mowgli was born in 2008 — and Harper was already a popular baby name (in the top 55) when the Beckhams chose it for their daughter.

Of course, the Kardashians do things a little differently, and nobody has dominated baby name trends like Kourtney Kardashian.

Say what you will about the Kardashian family — you don’t have to like the things they do or find them relatable — but Kourtney Kardashian becoming the first one of her siblings to have a child was a huge game-changer. Not only did the birth of her first son, Mason Disick, explode reality TV wide open, but it cracked into an incredibly vulnerable side of Kourtney. I will never forget the episode where she was begging her then-boyfriend Scott Disick to get some help for his alcohol use and sobbing, “I love Mason more than I love you.” Watching her become a mother — she literally pulled her newborn out of her own vagina while giving birth — opened up a whole new side of her for the Keeping Up with the Kardashians audience, and even at just 21 years old, I really felt the weight of her feelings.

And then there are the baby name trends.

Her first baby, Mason, was born in December 2009. Granted, the name was already quite popular at the time, ranking #34. But once the birth of Mason Disick was forever embedded in reality television on E!, the baby name jumped to #12 in 2010. (In the years before Mason was born, it had stayed pretty steady in the 50s to mid-30s on popularity lists.) And in 2011? Mason became the second most popular baby boy name in the country and stayed in the top 10 baby names until it fell in 2020.

Baby names become popular on their own, sure. But with 4.8 million people tuning into E! to see baby Mason born? You’ve got to give the name’s trend credit to Kourtney... especially when she did it again with her daughter Penelope.

Born in July 2012, Penelope is Kourtney and Scott’s second child and their only daughter. The name Penelope felt really unique when she chose it, and for good reason — it only sat around the 120s in popularity in 2012. By the time 2013 came around, though, Peneople was the 56th most popular baby girl name in America, and it continued to gain popularity each year. Since 2013, the baby name Penelope has stayed in the top 30 most popular girl names.

Now, when Kourtney’s son Reign, her last child with Disick, was born in December 2014, the name didn’t really become popular popular. In fact, Reign wasn’t even in the top 1000 baby names until 2017, nearly three years after Reign was born. However, since hitting its peak, it has steadily climbed, remaining in the 600s since 2020.

This brings us to Kourtney’s last baby, Rocky Barker, her son with Travis Barker, who was born in November 2023, when the name was #888 out of the top 1000 baby boy names. Since Kourtney gave birth, the name Rocky has jumped a whopping 231 spots. I predict this name will continue to gain popularity, as it’s unique, like Penelope, but not as niche-sounding as Reign. Everybody loves a name that ends in -y, and it has a playful, punchy vibe that’s becoming more and more popular with baby names lately.

Could you attribute all of these names and their popularity to other things? Of course. But when Kourtney Kardashian was literally on E! nearly every hour, at a red carpet event, or on Instagram for most of the time these baby names were embedding themselves in our brains, it’s hard not to find the connection. The Kardashians have always been trendsetters, but Kourtney’s role in creating entire generations of Penelopes and Masons and Rockys might be my favorite.