Jack Tame: Jack is back and Gary will be too

Anyone remember Rubicon?

Opinion

Whatever happened to Rubicon?

Man, blast from the past. The Auckland band was briefly top of the pops a while back (or number 16, apparently) with that three-chord gimmicky pop punk that teenage boys in the early 2000s found funny.

I never owned a Rubicon album and a quick search of my iTunes library draws a lonely hit.

The chorus to Bruce repeats several times in the whopping two minutes and 10 seconds of Rubicon's biggest splash.

"Who would call their kid Bruce, anyway? The poor kid would have to hang his head in shame ... "

It's not especially musical or witty. Still, Rubicon was kind of right; it's hard to imagine in this day and age a cutesy newborn baby called Bruce.

But if Bruce is out of fashion, Gary is doing even worse.

In 1952, 38,000 newborn American babies were christened with the name Gary. Sixty years later, as the population surges, the number of brand-new Garys is down to 442. The last time a girl in the US was christened Gary - which I didn't even know was a thing - was 1997. Gary is at risk of becoming extinct.

There is another side, though. I've seen it and hope is not lost. I was named Jack by my rarely trendy parents (Sorry, guys) about two years before it became popular and cool again.

Before 1987, Jack wasn't far off becoming the Gary of its generation. Nowadays, in every primary school, you have four or five Jacks per class (NB: my folks pushed their luck. My brother is the only Frank I've met under the age of 85).

And having an old and unpopular name isn't really so bad. It's kind of an investment. Fashion is a cyclical beast and what's out will soon be in. All the celebrities and influentials will soon tire of giving their babies silly made-up names and resort to tried-and-true and sturdy options that still make their kids stand out at school: Names like Gary.

Just give it 50 years and those 442 guys will have the trendiest names around.

• Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB Saturdays, 9am-midday.