More interesting than it might first appear. If you try a name like 'Stanley' you can see the devastating effects of the war years. You also see a resurgence in the name 20 years or so later, I'd guess when people want to remember a parent or grandparent in their own child.
Yup. I'm not from US. And also my name is uncommon too. Even in my country. You know what, I didn't see enyone who has my name so far. I think I have a pretty unique name..!
Spelling it as the president spells it -- Barack -- shows a jump from nonexistent to "something" right around 2009. I wouldn't go so far as to call it noise because it's more than just coincidence, but it's still only ~0.003% of the male population born that year. (60 births/(0.5*4,000,000 total births).
You don't think its as simple as people choosing one of the ten most popular names for a given year do you?
I found it exceedingly accurate with most of the people for a given first name I know being born plus or minus five years of the peak for that name in popularity.
> You don't think its as simple as people choosing one of the ten most popular names for a given year do you?
Maybe, but why do those names become popular? William, Harry, George and Charlotte are obvious (British royal babies) and other names have interesting rises and falls.
Ha! I got my own name when I first landed on the site. For a second there I thought the real story was that they'd somehow exploited a third party cookie but it appears to be a coincidence.
Funny how the curve fits historical incidents. Searching for "Adolf" and the name gains in popularity in the 1910s and 1920s; dips in the 1930s as Nazism rises; and nosedives in the early 1940s as WWII kicks off. Interesting.
Contrarily, the name "Winston" jumps in the 1940s.
It's easy to see why names such as "Buzz" have the curves that they have (space race), but it's hard to trace any event that influenced more common names. For example, check "Jacob", "Justin". Does anybody have an idea as to why these curves have this shape?
The Jacob and Justin rises correlate very well with the baby-boomer generation beginning to have children.
It's interesting to note that the increase in the use of Justin has a matching (if slightly lagging) increase in literature[1], while the increase in Jacob isn't[2].
Bob Green years ago wrote about going to the "Linda Hop", a convention of boomer women all named Linda. The article traced the name back to a song popular in the early 1950s. As far as male v. female, it seems more common to name sons after fathers than daughters after mothers.
Amy and Sarah were two of the most popular girl's names when I was growing up.
My wife dug in her heels pretty early in the pregnancy for a name that I later learned was a character on a TV show. Judging by the site, she's not the only one. The peak is still under a hundred, so not as embarrassing as, say, characters from 90210.
Some strange looking mortality on low volume names, I used Irish names, Male-Darragh, Female-Clodagh.
E.g Clodagh goes from 13 to 5.5 between 2009-2010
I don't think a drop reflects mortality, only in popularity as a baby name--the graph is showing you how many new people with that name were added to the total pool over time.
Funny how Mael has won quite a lot of hype in the past years (it's still a rare name, sure, but it's much more common now than when I first ...acquired... it).
Peculiarly, there were dozens of instances of boys named Sue prior to Shel Silverstein writing "A Boy Named Sue", which makes me suspect that the song in question might very well have been a true story.
Curiously, the popularity of naming boys "Susan" [0] also peaked more than half a decade before the song was published. ("Sue", in contrast, peaked even earlier in the mid-40's, though it seems it made a comeback in the late-80's).
I think most people are more interested in the absolute numbers for each year. There aren't any conclusions being presented from the data, so it isn't a huge problem. It also doesn't vary so much:
84 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 2090 ms ] threadhttp://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html
(So perhaps you aren't in the US and your name wouldn't show up in the source data, or perhaps you are in the US and your name is uncommon)
I found it exceedingly accurate with most of the people for a given first name I know being born plus or minus five years of the peak for that name in popularity.
Maybe, but why do those names become popular? William, Harry, George and Charlotte are obvious (British royal babies) and other names have interesting rises and falls.
http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
Or Elvis whose popularity as a first name looks like a roller coaster.
http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
My point is, the tightness of the peak might have nothing to do with Ms Spears.
http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
What do they say happens to those who don't label their axis? I've forgotten...
Interestingly, "Buzz" seems to track events and anniversaries in the space race quite neatly. Toy Story had no impact.
Contrarily, the name "Winston" jumps in the 1940s.
I find this funny.
It's easy to see why names such as "Buzz" have the curves that they have (space race), but it's hard to trace any event that influenced more common names. For example, check "Jacob", "Justin". Does anybody have an idea as to why these curves have this shape?
It's interesting to note that the increase in the use of Justin has a matching (if slightly lagging) increase in literature[1], while the increase in Jacob isn't[2].
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Justin&year_st...
[2] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Jacob&year_sta...
I just figured out that it shows a random one when you don't enter a query, that's cool.
Other spikes: Linda, Jordan, Mason, Deborah, Beth, Paige, Laurie, Chloe, Megan, Stella, Stacey, Kim
It seems like female names are much more likely to have sharp spikes in popularity verses male first names.
Names (just like everything else) have fads. Fads come and go.
The other names show similar shapes:
Meg: http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
Jo: http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
Beth: http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
The second bump for Meg could be due to Meg Ryan?
My wife dug in her heels pretty early in the pregnancy for a name that I later learned was a character on a TV show. Judging by the site, she's not the only one. The peak is still under a hundred, so not as embarrassing as, say, characters from 90210.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Ties
http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
'Adolf' seems uniformly credited to just a few poor souls- http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
Polling to the max...
Curiously, the popularity of naming boys "Susan" [0] also peaked more than half a decade before the song was published. ("Sue", in contrast, peaked even earlier in the mid-40's, though it seems it made a comeback in the late-80's).
[0]: http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html
Enjoy!
Outrageous.
This is what happens when you're #4...