Fwd: Why name "Madison" so popular for girls?

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:57 PM -0600 3/24/04, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>Atlanta reporter Bill Hendrick sent me the questions below my
>signoff, but I don't have the answers. Would anyone in ans-l know?
>
>Gerald Cohen
>
>
>
>At 9:36 AM -0500 3/24/04, Bill Hendrick wrote:
>>Hello.
>>any idea why Madison has become so popular for girls? It's No. 2
>>now, but was no. 133 in 1991. Kaitlyn also has gone from 85th to
>>32nd in popularity. and Grace has gone from 128 to 15. why do these
>>names move up? I don't remember any of these from movies or TV
>>shows. what's happening?
>>many thanks,
>>Bill Hendrick

One standard answer is the use of the name for the mermaid played by
Daryl (sp?) Hannah in "Splash" (opposite Tom Hanks).  It was actually
quite a painless comedy, and Hannah was a lovely mermaid.  The Hanks
character asks her her name at some point while walking in Midtown
Manhattan, she doesn't have one (being a mermaid and all), and looks
up at the Madison Ave. street sign, and the rest is history.    The
problem with this theory is that "Splash" was released in the
mid-1980s, and evidently the big jump in popularity came quite a bit
later.

Larry Horn