Kylo Ren was not a popular character. Nobody bought his merchandise. A Twitter feed put New Order lyrics and whining into his mouth to the delight of the entire internet. And in the movie, he was a useless goober with a busted saber, getting his ass kicked by Rey, who discovered she had superpowers about fifteen minutes before she humiliated him like Carrie at the prom. It’s not that Rey was that good, it’s just that Kylo sucked that hard. And yet, the Social Security Administration has revealed there are way too many babies named “Kylo.”
The Social Security Administration has dropped its baby name data for 2016, and the name that grew the most in popularity in 2016, going from #3269 most popular to #901, was Kylo. That is, according to the data, a 2,368 percent increase in kids named after the guy who became the butt of every Millennial joke on the planet and got upstaged by Captain Phasma, who doesn’t do a damn thing in The Force Awakens except look cool and get sucker-punched.
To be fair, Star Wars has a long history of inspiring unfortunate baby names. But we’d get somebody naming their kid Rey, Leia, Han, or Lando. Why is Kylo so popular? Or, for that matter, Anakin, which jumped nearly 200 spots in the rankings and had a 132 percent increase in popularity? If you have to name your kid after the most reviled characters in Star Wars, which can be scientifically proven to ruin their lives, let’s go full measure and name ’em Jar-Jar.
(via the Social Security Administration)