Wolverine is one of the most recognizable superheroes in all of fiction. The character debuted on the pages of comic books in 1974. Since then, Wolverine has appeared on television followed by the big screen where he was famously played by Hugh Jackman in a series of X-men films.
The dour antihero is a compelling character. He’s been the subject of countless online essays, YouTube videos and even a Psychology Today article. Wolverine may even be the inspiration for baby names. While there aren’t many parents that could convince their partner to name their child Wolverine outright – I don’t think I could convince my wife anyways – the characters given name, Logan, might be a defensible compromise.
Would this scenario play out in practice – one where a parent wants to name a child Wolverine but settles on Logan as reasonable middle ground? I have no idea.
Would the appearance of a popular character in film named Logan impact the number of children given that name? It would seem so.
In the figure above I have plotted the number of male newborns in the United States given the name Logan since the introduction of the Wolverine character (source) and highlighted half years corresponding to the release of X-men movies where Wolverine plays a prominent role. Also highlighted is a span of time during which the popular X-men animated series aired. Each seemingly correspond to an increase in the number of children named ‘Logan’.
The only exception seems to be the second X-men film in the franchise X2. The first explanation that comes to mind is an X-men cartoon that aired during the intervening period between the first two movies. It’s possible that the cartoon series could have saturated the susceptible-to-a-wolverine-based-name market to the point where another X-men movie was unable to have an appreciable effect.
Sources:
- Baby Names, https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html
- Movie and Television Dates, imdb
