How do names become 'fashionable'?

[scarlettlips]

How does a name be fashionable or popular?

I saw a comment yesterday about my DD's name being 'quite fashionable' which really surprised me. We picked DD's name because we didn't want as fashionable name, sods law...oh well such is life

I hear you Lonnie. My partner and I both very much liked the name Cora for years, and it was one of our front-runners if we had a daughter. But someone up the thread mentioned it as a Downton Abbey name that's about to go huge - I only watched about ten minutes of the episode where the Turkish guy died in whatshername's bed, thought it was crap, and have no idea what the characters are called, so would have been rather annoyed had we called a little girl Cora to have people assume it was a tribute to not-very-good-despite-Hugh-Bonneville Julian Fellowes TV programme!

In the case of Honor, did that not become very popular after Jessica Alba's first daughter?

Not in the UK (well, England & Wales). I just looked it up and it was in 487th place in 2008, 417 in 2009 and 471 last year. It may have caught on more in the USA.