From the month of December to the month of May, any full name that American Girl trademarks is fair game to be a Girl of the Year doll. However, this year, something different happened. Not one, not two, but THREE names were trademarked with full names, including two names with the same last name.
On Christmas last year, Kavika Sharma was trademarked by American Girl. Names relating to Kavika were also trademarked in Feburary, including Pegeen, a potential pet name, and the nickname Kavi, including Kavi Sharma. However, a week or two ago, two names were trademarked: Nicki and Isabel Cohen. At first, I held firm to my belief that Kavika would be the 2023 Girl of the Year, but the two trademark situation for Nicki and Isabel made me think harder. Ultimately, I made a decision on my theory for the next Girl of the Year, which I'll tell you at the end! But first, a bit about the names:
Kavika is a Indian name that means "poet" in Hindi. Her pet Pegeen is the middle name of poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly, a famous poet in the Contemporary era. Addiitonally, her nickname Kavi also means poet in Hindi, so it's clear Kavika will be a poet.
Isabel and Nicki have both been used before in the Girl of the Year line. Isabelle Palmer was Girl of the Year 2014, and Nicki Fleming was Girl of the Year 2007. It could be thought of that one of these two will be the new Girl of the Year due to Corinne, this year's doll, having a sister, but I honestly think these two will be part of World By Us. American Girl has never reused a name in the same line, and their last name is Jewish, so it would make sense as American Girl currently doesn't have a modern Jewish doll available, and AG would want to have a sister set available for longer than a few years.
Kavika, on the other hand, would be the first South Asian doll since Sonali. It would make sense to introduce an Indian doll, as India is the highest-populated country, Indian Americans are the highest-earning racial group in the United States, and the Indian American population is growing. It makes financial and representative sense to release a Indian American Girl doll as the Girl of the Year, so I believe Kavika will be GOTY 2023!
What do you think?
I believe it's Kavika. For some reason, because Nicki and Isabelle are technically still GOTY characters, I don't see them have another new character with any names similar. It would cut into marketing, especially since the dolls still appear in the glass cases at AGP.
My theory is that they might all be apart of the same release like what happened with Krissa. She was released with Gwen and Sonali. I hope that the central character is Kavi, though.
Then again I don't think Isabel and Nicki are the girl of the year because they already have two Girl Of The Year dolls with those names. They more than likely of World By Us or possibly historicals...maybe from the 1990s?
I believe kavi will be a wbu doll and not a goty because of their whole twins and/or siblings thing. Unless, of course, it wears off after a bit. I mean really, the whole travel twins idea was back in joss's heyday of 2020... right?
Didn't they used to have fake trademarked names to throw people off? Whatever happend to those? I really hope Nicki and Isabel are not the real names they are going to use for these characters, but just placeholder names, even though I'm starting to doubt it. I find it maddening when they reuse names! There are literally milllions of names out there! Our Generation names EVERY doll and yet they still manage to come up with original names for each of them. Come on AG!
Nicki is an interesting name choice to want to recycle since it's not a very popuar name and seems very dated. Most people who go by that name were originally named Nicole, which was a…
It seems pretty likely that Kavika will be the GOTY for 2023, considering the fact that Corrine has a sister this year, and repeating that, especially right after the other, would be a little odd. Also, both Nicki and Isabel have been used as GOTY names before, so it wouldn’t make sense to repeat them. Plus, they GOTY usually has a pet, or some sort of animal companion in their collection, and we already know that Kavika has a pet trademarked, which could be a clue to if she will be the GOTY or not