no old person is named "Kyle" 🧓🏽

On a name, on a time.

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My name is Kyle. Why is it Kyle? I honestly have no idea. My siblings have names with a story: one’s named after my father, one’s named after an Irish saint, one’s named after a great grandmother, all of them are niche and not very “common.” But my name is unique in it’s non-uniqueness: it is a very popular name, being the 23rd most popular boy name in the year of my birth before peaking in 1990 as the 18th most popular boy name. The name is so popular that there are a variety of shitposts about Kyle stereotypes, not to mention the South Park character (who has a very specific pronunciation that haunts all of us Kyles) along with a viral Vine (which also haunts all of us Kyles).

But one thing I think about a lot, which relates to the hypothetical modernity or “trendiness” of the name: there aren’t many old Kyles. In fact, I’ve never met a Kyle “older” than me or my age group. I know there’s Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights and Kyle Richards from Real Housewives but the rest of the Kyles are all a grab bag of Millennial persons in athletes (in soccer, in basketball, in football), similarly aged performers (an R&B singer, a choreographer, the “Planet of the Bass” guy), and various micro-celebs of the age, from a former SNL cast member to a Times columnist to a right wing ghoul.

And then there is the ultimate Kyle, the one from which all of us stem, a person who is arguably the oldest Kyle alive: Kyle MacLachlan.