Author JK Rowling reading from “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (Public domain)
In a column in The Wall Street Journal, Ellen Gamerman explores the cultural impact of the Harry Potter series by sifting through onomastic data from naming records in the United States. According to the US Social Security Administration, virtually all names that appear in the Potterverse—those of protagonists and antagonists alike—saw a meteoric rise in use after the year 2000. Gamerman also interviews Harry Potter fans who named their children after the characters; only some of these children became Harry Potter fans themselves.