President Donald Trump’s name has never less popular as a baby name than it is now, but he’s naming the next generation’s new savings accounts after himself anyway.
Fewer Americans named their children Donald in 2025 than any year in U.S. history going back to the 1880s, according to Social Security Administration data. But for kids born between 2025 and 2028, they’re now eligible for new tax-advantaged investment accounts for kids called “Trump Accounts.” Also known as 530A accounts, their official name in government communications and the law that created them is named for Trump, and that could prove to be a hindrance for parents turned off by the partisan association.
Just look to “Obamacare.”
After then-President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law in 2010, critics of the healthcare law began calling it Obamacare as a pejorative, but the nickname stuck and eventually was adopted by proponents too.
“I have no problem with folks saying ‘Obamacares,’” Obama said during a 2011 town hall. “I do care. If the other side wants to be the folks that don’t care, that’s fine with me.”
But what you called the law mattered when pollsters asked. A 2013 Gallup poll found that when respondents were asked about the ACA, it had a 45% approval rating. When it was called Obamacare, though, its approval dropped to 38%.
Regardless of party affiliation, majorities of Americans support ACA provisions like prohibiting private health insurance companies from denying coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition or to pregnant women. Calling it Obamacare, though, connects the law by name with a president some don’t like. Since Obama left office and the daily drubbing of partisan politics, though, the law’s approval has soared, reaching a high of 66% last June, per KFF Health Tracking polls.
Research shows citizens use partisan cues or shortcuts to form opinions, and naming programs after presidents creates an immediate shortcut that might turn off voters of the opposite party, even if they might otherwise show support under a different name.
Democrats have put forward their own ideas for investment accounts for kids before. A “baby bond” program under the proposed American Opportunity Accounts Act cosponsored by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey would have been publicly funded and financially progressive, so the benefits wouldn’t most accrue to the wealthy who can most afford to fully fund the accounts to their maximum limits annually, as they can under the Trump administration’s program. (Though Booker’s proposal hasn’t passed, he has worked across the aisle with Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to urge CEOs to donate to the Trump administration’s new accounts.)
To get their own version of an account for kids passed under Trump, Republican lawmakers turned to flattery. An early proposal for the accounts called them “Money Accounts for Growth and Advancement” accounts to make an acronym for MAGA, but the accounts were renamed “Trump accounts” for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year.
Trump has long worked to take credit for government programs and spending (even if he had nothing to do with it), and the Trump accounts are the latest example. If he really wants them to have the best chance of success, though, the best thing he could do might be to rebrand the accounts by a less polarizing name. Parents aren’t naming their kids after Trump these days. Perhaps the federal government could follow.
