In 2015, more than 6,000 babies were given the name. By 2020, the name’s popularity had plummeted 78%. Only 1,300 babies were named Alexa last year.
Hey Alexa, stop using my name!
There are 130,000 people in the U.S. named Alexa, and some of them are not exactly thrilled with Amazon’s virtual assistant.
Inside Edition spoke to several Alexas who are expressing their frustration over their name being adopted by the e-commerce giant.
“I was immediately upset when I saw that a machine had been given my name,” one woman said.
“I definitely feel like I receive a lot of the jokes or like the innuendos,” another said.
Washington Post reporter Alexa Juliana Ard says she was “getting comments or people expressing pity or disappointment when they learned my name, like it was a flaw.”
Ard says she started going by Juliana outside of work and family.
Another woman says she shortens her name to “Lex” when she introduces herself.
“I just feel like Amazon has so many employees, so many people to make these decisions, and I can’t believe no one stopped to consider the impact it would have on human Alexas,” she said.
In 2015, more than 6,000 babies were given the name. By 2020, the name’s popularity had plummeted 78%. Only 1,300 babies were named Alexa last year.
If you don’t want your Amazon device to answer to “Alexa,” you can change the name to something else. But some Alexas say they want Amazon to change the name altogether.
Amazon picked the name Alexa in homage to Egypt's library of Alexandria, which in ancient times was known as the center of knowledge.
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