I haven’t done a baby name analysis for a while, so I thought I’d check to see if any of the Democratic hopefuls have inspired a naming trend. Unfortunately, the Social Security Administration data sets only go through 2018, so it is unsurprising that the answer is no. The charts below illustrate the point. I […]
In my last post I discussed recent trends in baby names, focusing on why some have come into or gone out of fashion. Today I want to look at which names are regional, and speculate why that is. These tables might be useful for authors choosing names for their characters. I selected several boys’ and […]
Recent trends in baby names can only be tracked through 2017 since U.S. Census data has published only that far. There are some interesting trends, though. If you just want to know what’s popular these days, you can go to the census site. I’m more interested in what has changed significantly upward or downward and […]
The names we give our children can tell us something about the society we live in. I’ve posted about this a few months ago. This data is from the U.S. Census Bureau. Take a look at the following chart. The name Leslie can be male or female. It seems that in the 1940’s and 1950’s […]
Have you ever wondered how much, if at all, pop culture, politics, or other publicity influences how parents name their babies? Here are a few graphs, culled from naming data provided by the Social Security Administration that will provide ample proof that it happens. Click on the images to enlarge them. For those who are […]
Continuing yesterday’s post about my new baby names toy, it’s interesting to see to what extent names are distributed on religious or ethnic lines. For example, Muhammad only became frequent enough to show up in the last decade or so, and it has a definite regional preference: This probably represents the influx of Muslim immigrants […]
The Social Security Administration has recently released the list of baby names here: Lists of baby names. The lists include data by year of birth, but do not include all names for privacy reasons. Read the explanation on their site if you want to know more. I downloaded the data by state and wrote a […]
My last post showed those baby names that gained the most in popularity from 2017 to 2020. Today I show those that plummeted the farthest. Boys’ names that lost the most in popularity from 2017 to 2020 Name 2017 rank 2020 rank Gavin 96 141 Brayden 72 111 Bryson 86 115 Chase 94 123 Jason […]
A couple of years ago I posted about what baby names were trending upward or downward. At that time the most recent Social Security data was from 2017. Now the 2020 baby name data is out, so I thought I’d update that post. After all, trends tend to be very … trendy. If you just […]
Saturday Night Live used to have a regular skit involving a character called Androgynous Pat. Pat’s hapless subordinate was constantly trying to figure out whether Pat was male or female, without success. I thought it would be fun to see which names are still androgynous and which new names that weren’t before are now. I […]
There are plenty of sites that tell you the most popular baby names for the current (or last) year. Here’s a good one for 2019, if that’s what you want . What interests me is identifying which names are the most trendy, i.e. rapidly gaining or falling in popularity. You may want to get in […]
Here’s another meaningless pop analysis of famous couples. I surfed the U.S. Census baby names data base for male/female names that shared a similar history. More specifically, I checked by decade starting with the 1880s and looked at the popularity rank of the 200 most popular boys’ names and 200 most popular girls’ names in […]
One more post about baby names and then I’ll leave it.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins My rating: 5 of 5 stars If you liked Gone Girl you’ll love this one, too. A young woman goes missing. Is she dead? You think you know who the bad guys and good guys are, but then you’re not so sure. The story is told through […]