Melissa Harris-Perry: I am Melissa Harris-Perry.

Now, have you all ever wondered how we decide which stories to cover here on The Takeaway? Well, this one started as a text message that one of our producers, Ryan Wilde, received from a former colleague. That's how it started. Here's how it's going. A special Takeaway report.

Ryan Wilde: I got a text that said, "Hey Ryan, saw this today and thought of you." It included a photo of a flier that said, "Is your name Ryan? Want to meet other Ryans? Come to the Ryan Meetup." There was a QR code with details for the meetup, and below that it's said in no uncertain terms, "No Bryans allowed." Now, I've always felt fine about my name, I guess, but Ryan never felt like a super special name either. I was intrigued. I had no idea what to expect, but maybe meeting a room full of Ryans would boost my Ryan pride.

On a late March day, I found myself rolling up to a bar in Manhattan. The name of the place, fittingly, Ryan Maguire's.

Ryan Wilde: Hey.

Ryan: How are you doing?

Ryan Wilde: How are you?

Ryan: Good. How are you?

Ryan Wilde: Is your name Ryan, too? [crosstalk] Your middle name's Ryan? I'll have a Ryan's Lager. It seems apropos, and then you can start me a tab. Just put it under Ryan.

[laughter]

Ryan Wilde: With a Ryan Lager in hand, I headed towards a room in the back where I saw about a dozen Ryans mingling. I'm here a bit early to interview Ryan Rose, the organizer of this whole thing. Are you Ryan?

Ryan: I'm a Ryan. Can I see your ID, Ryan?

Ryan Wilde: Yes.

Ryan: [unintelligible 00:01:44] your name tag?

Ryan Wilde: Sure. I guess I need a name tag so I need to show my ID. Are you founder Ryan?

Ryan: No. That would be Ryan Rose, [unintelligible 00:01:50] .

Ryan Wilde: Okay.

Ryan: Ryan Wilde. Thank you so much.

Ryan Wilde: Do I get a name tag?

Ryan: You do get a name tag. Here you go.

Ryan Wilde: There's a table full of about a hundred red, "Hello, my name is--" name tag. Every one of them is already filled in with the name 'Ryan'. I see three guys standing around in a circle. I nudge my way in. How you doing? I'm Ryan. What's your name?

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Ryan. [unintelligible 00:02:12]. I'm Ryan.

Ryan: I'm Ryan. Nice to meet you.

Ryan Wilde: Nice to meet you. Ryans all around but no Ryan Rose. Press on anyway. One of the Ryan speaks up. This is Ryan Stirt.

Ryan Stirt: I'm trying to figure out what the commonalities are [unintelligible 00:02:26] , like the parents of the people who had named their children Ryan. So far we have an Irish culture.

Ryan Wilde: Now Ryan Neff jumps in.

Ryan Neff: I think there were a lot of Ryan's in the late '80s, early '90s that the name have become really popular. Then it fell out of style for some reason. I don't know why. It's a great name. That's my hypothesis.

Ryan Wilde: More on that hypothesis later, but first I noticed one person who really stood out amongst the group.

Ryan Stirt: Hey, I'm Ryan.

Ryan Rose: Hey Ryan.

Ryan Stirt: What's your name?

Ryan Rose: Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Your name's Ryan, too. Tell me how you got to this meetup.

Ryan Rose: What do you mean? How it started?

Ryan Wilde: Are you the Ryan?

Ryan Rose: I am the Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: You're the Ryan. It's so nice to meet you. I admit, I foolishly assumed that Ryan Rose was going to be a guy and I'm not the only one who makes this mistake. How was growing up with the name Ryan?

Ryan Rose: Growing up I didn't like it too much because I'd always get mixed up as a guy. In one of my yearbooks in sophomore year, there was a picture of some other male and my name underneath. My ID for that year was just not me and I'd always get boy scout mail and I get mixed up in sporting events, being put in guys categories, but now I love it.

Ryan Wilde: I asked her why bother with all of this?

Ryan Rose: It's not too deep. I just wanted to bring all the Ryans together. I thought it'd be fun.

Ryan Wilde: Only three Ryans showed up to the first meetup in February. For this one, she put up over 500 fliers across the country.

Ryan Rose: I recently did a road trip down to Texas. Everywhere along the way I was plastering Ryan fliers. I put them in front of the White House, every Waffle House, South by Southwest, Myrtle Beach, Bourbon Street.

Ryan Wilde: This is a national movement.

Ryan Rose: I'm trying to make it a national movement.

Ryan Wilde: One of the things I was very intrigued by with the flier was no Bryans allowed.

Ryan Rose: No, everyone loves a little drama. Also, in Ryan-Bryan realm, there's a constant battle of who's better than who?

Ryan Wilde: We'll get into the Ryan-Bryan drama in a little bit. First, I soon found evidence of the Ryan Meetup being a national phenomenon.

Ryan Hatfield: My name's Ryan Hatfield. I'm 19 years old.

Ryan Wilde: True to his name, Ryan Hatfield was sporting a big cowboy hat. He's tall and wiry and wears a giant grin that never leaves his face. He saw the flier posted online.

Ryan Hatfield: I thought it was incredible. Of course, my name is Ryan and I thought I'd take a quick detour here. I'm coming up from Texas. Very excited for that.

Ryan Wilde: Are you visiting from Texas?

Ryan Hatfield: Yes, indeed.

Ryan Wilde: Just for the Ryan Meetup?

Ryan Hatfield: I did. This is beautiful.

Ryan Wilde: Are there a lot of Ryans in Texas?

Ryan Hatfield: I have met so many Ryans. In fact my mom's maiden name is Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Texas Ryan's story here reminded me of the origins of my own name, steeped in my own Irish heritage.

[phone rings]

Ryan Wilde: Hi mom.

Ryan Wilde's Mom: Hi.

Ryan Wilde: Tell me why you decided to name me Ryan.

Ryan Wilde's Mom: I think that we named you Ryan because it was in reference to your grandmother and her name was Marcella Ryan. I think we wanted to honor her in that way and I'm glad that we did because she was the best example of unconditional love. There you go.

Ryan Wilde: Lots of the Ryans were named after grandparents. I met one Ryan who was conceived in the room of their parents' friend named Ryan.

Ryan: Okay, then.

Ryan: Okay, then.

Ryan: Okay, then.

Ryan Wilde: Some Ryans were named after other famous Ryans, like this Ryan.

Jim Ryun: I'm actually named after two runners, Jim Ryun and Sebastian Coe. Sebastian's my middle name. Jim Ryun is my namesake and because my dad is a long distance runner and very into physical fitness.

Sports Commentator: On the homes stretch, Ryan's long effortless stride have taken him 30 yards ahead of [unintelligible 00:06:30] . At the tape, [unintelligible 00:06:32] smashed the world record by two and a half seconds, a tremendous win for Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Jim Ryun was the first high schooler to run a sub-four minute mile in 1964. In 1968, he won a silver medal at the Olympics. He later served as a congressman from Kansas for 10 years. You feel like there's a lot of pressure to be running Ryan?

Jim Ryun: I was a running Ryan and actually my last name is Dunning. My dad was running Dunning. I was also running Dunning. I lived up to my namesake there.

Ryan Wilde: Jim Ryun's last name is actually spelled R-Y-U-N. Now, I applaud his parents for not naming him 'Ryan Ryun' but also he probably was never at risk of that. Ryan just wasn't a name parents were considering for their newborns in the '40s. The social security administration tracks every name given to newborns. In 1947, the year Jim Ryun was born, Ryan was the 689th most popular boy's name behind names like Wilton, Benedict, Sherwood, Milford. You get the idea.

It wasn't until the late '60s and '70s that the name Ryan really burst onto the scene. More on that when we come back on The Takeaway, right after this.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. The Takeaway recently sent producer Ryan Wilde out into the field to report on a unique gathering, one where your name absolutely had to be Ryan to enter. Here again is our Ryan Wilde.

Ryan Wilde: The name Ryan wasn't popular at all until the 1970s.

Cleveland Evans: My name is Cleveland Evans. I am a professor emeritus of psychology at Bellevue University and past president of the American Name Society.

Ryan Wilde: The American Name Society was founded in 1951 to promote onomastics.

Cleveland Evans: That's the scholarly study of names.

Ryan Wilde: He says that when parents are naming children, there are certain patterns that they follow.

Cleveland Evans: They always say they want to find something which is different but not too different. They're looking for something which sounds like something which was popular before.

Ryan Wilde: Ryan gained popularity on the heels of another popular name at the time.

Cleveland Evans: Ryan, in a sense, got popular because Bryan had previously become popular a generation before. People were looking for an alternative to Bryan, something that was new and cool but sounded like Bryan.

Ryan Wilde: I've stumbled upon the origins of the Ryan-Bryan rivalry, but there are more reasons why Ryan catapulted up the baby name charts and into the hearts of new parents.

[music]

Cleveland Evans: When Ryan O'Neal first got famous on the TV show, Peyton Place, it does its first little jump up in the '60s, and then in 1971, right after he becomes a huge megastar in Love Story. [music]

Ryan O'Neal: What would you say if I told you I think I'm in love with you?

Cleveland Evans: Then, it starts absolutely skyrocketing in the early '70s, and that's because everybody who was looking for this different but not too different alternative to Bryan heard it at the same time by becoming aware of Ryan O'Neal's existence.

Ryan Wilde: Whether it was parents naming their kids after Ryan O'Neal or the runner, Jim Ryun, or some other reason entirely, the name Ryan hit the top 25 most popular boys' names in the '70s and stayed there for the next four decades.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: Now, the name Ryan has its origins in Ireland.

Micheal O Mainnin: The name Ryan is a very old Irish name. It's probably at least 1000 years old and probably closer to 1200 or 1300 years old. It's also found in the common Irish surname O'Ryan or simply Ryan without the O.

Micheal O Mainnin: My name is Micheal O Mainnin and I'm a professor of Irish and Celtic languages in Queen's University in Belfast.

Ryan Wilde: As English power in Ireland grew in the 17th century, Ryan became anglicized and the name evolved from a last name to a first name.

Micheal O Mainnin: It's thought to be derived from the Irish word for king, which is 'Rí'. The R-I was [unintelligible 00:11:20]. This is still the [unintelligible 00:11:21] word in Irish for king. The 'an' at the end means little in Irish. It's a diminutive ending, so Ryan does indeed mean 'little king'.

Ryan Wilde: Back at the Ryan meetup, there were lots of folks in their 20s and 30s and 40s, but I managed to find the littlest king of them all.

Speaker 4: Ryan's nine months old.

Ryan Wilde: He's nine months. Can I ask why you decided to name him Ryan?

Speaker 4: Boys' names are really hard. There are two that I like and Ryan just happens to be one of them. He really wants to eat your microphone.

Ryan Wilde: The thing about names is that when you're a baby, you get no say in the matter. In life, we can choose our career, our friends, our partners, but our first names, not so much, or so I thought. Meet Ryan Chen.

Ryan Chen: I was actually born in China. When I came here, my parents were hoping that I could choose a name and one of the options they gave me was Ryan and they told me that it meant some kind of a king or something like that.

Ryan Wilde: A little king, not by birth, but by choice. I feel like most people here probably were assigned the name, but you chose Ryan?

Ryan Chen: I did, yes. I had many options. I could have been a Zacharia. Thank God I wasn't a Zacharia. I could have been a Michael, a little bit bland. The other option was Kevin, which I dodged a bullet with that one. Can you imagine a Kevin meetup?

Ryan Wilde: By now, the place was packed. There must have been about 70 Ryans and the pride was through the roof.

Crowd: [chanting] Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Every king, even a little king, needs a castle. As luck would have it, I found Ryan Day Castle, and yes, seriously, that's her name. I'm curious what brings you here today?

Ryan Day Castle: Clearly, the Ryans have brought me out, and obviously the prospect of me being around so many others who I feel like I also probably was surprised. Not a lot of Black girl Ryans, so that's very fun.

Ryan Wilde: I asked her how she got the name.

Ryan Day Castle: I knew that it was a majority male name, but I asked my parents why did they name me something a little bit more masculine, and they said, "Why be a queen when you can be the king?" I thought that was great and I've been running with it ever since.

Ryan Wilde: Even the one non-Ryan in attendance was having a good time.

Cat Sposato: Cat Sposato, associate producer for The Takeaway.

Ryan Wilde: Cat was helping me record the sound at the event. Cat, what, as a non-Ryan, is your impression so far?

Cat Sposato: I can't put my finger on it, but there's something that everybody in this room shares besides the name. They have a similar energy.

Ryan Wilde: I caught up with Ryan Rose again, the organizer of the Ryan Meetup.

Ryan Rose: I don't think there is an icebreaker, which is beautiful. We all just feel like we already know each other. Any Ryan in this room could talk to anybody and they just immediately bond. It's great energy.

Ryan Wilde: That's true. There was something egalitarian about the entire premise. Typical conversation norms went out the window at the Ryan Meetup. You could skip the formalities, the whole, "Hi, my name is--" You can just jump right in. The one thing that people were the most eager to talk about, Bryans.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: This is Ryan Chen again. He's the one who handpicked the name Ryan when he was 11.

Ryan Chen: Bryans are our natural enemies. Maybe they have this aura or voodoo that prohibits our name from being spelled correctly. I think it's a conspiracy.

Ryan Wilde: The Bryan conspiracy theorists were on high alert. This is Ryan Grippy.

Ryan Grippy: If I'm being honest, coming here I thought this was a setup for the Bryans. The Bryans were just coming to trap us because we have always had a name so similar to Bryan that people at Starbucks specifically mishear us and think our names are Bryan.

Ryan Wilde: This definitely happens to me all the time. It's gotten to the point where I deliberately emphasize the R when saying my name, like R-R-Ryan, but people still call me Bryan. Here's Ryan Neff again.

Ryan Neff: I think there's a lot of times where it's confused with Bryan. Actually, there was one person that I had met at an event and his name was Bryan and my name was Ryan. We were introducing ourselves to each other and he was like, "Hey, my name's Bryan." I would go, "My name's Ryan." He'd be like, "No, my name's Bryan." I'm like, "Yes, I know. Hi, Bryan. My name's Ryan." There was this back and forth and it was super awkward because I think we both got our names confused for each other's.

Ryan Wilde: Another Ryan, Ryan Mitchell, offered a diplomatic solution to the whole Ryan-Bryan war.

Ryan Mitchell: I feel like it comes with the Ryan lifestyle. You just have to own up to it, but also be calm about it, be humane about it. Just be like, "Hey, sorry, man. I think you got that the wrong way." That's not even the worst of it. That's the tip of the iceberg. One time, I went to a fast food restaurant and my name came up on the receipt as Rain.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: I met all sorts of Ryans at the meetup, but everyone seemed to rally around this perceived conflict. I guess you can't really feel like a part of a team without having a rival. I'm not sure there's any profound takeaway or insight I gleaned at the Ryan Meetup. All in all, it's just pure fun and maybe I was feeling a little bit more proud of my name. Here's Ryan Grippy again.

Ryan Grippy: These people all have the same name as me and we could all make jokes like, "Hi, Ryan." It's just something that can allow you to have joy and appreciate joy in something so simple. You can't take life too seriously.

Ryan Wilde: As the party was wrapping up, I couldn't help but feel like I was in on something, in on the joke, part of the in-crowd. I wish that other people, people whose names are not Ryan, got to experience it all. At the end, I asked Ryan Rose, the organizer if every name should have a meetup.

Ryan Rose: I would love for other people to have meetups with their same name. I think it's beautiful and everybody should experience it at one point, except for Bryans.

Ryan Wilde: My thanks to the dozens of Ryans I met at the meetup. See you all at the next one.

Crowd: [chanting] Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.

Melissa Harris-Perry: A big thanks to our Takeaway producer, Ryan Wilde, for that fun report. Almost certainly, that is a record for the number of mentions of Ryan in one radio segment.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryans, Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryan.

Ryan: Ryans.

Ryan: Ryan.

[music]

 

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