Some interesting statistics on baby names from the Social Security website, and lots of way to slice and dice the data: in the 1970s, the decade in which I was born, Jeffrey–this is how I spell my full first name; please, not Jeffery–was the 15th most popular name for boys. (The data come from Social Security card applications.) By 2002, Jeffrey had steadily declined to 132nd. Heh, I kind of like that, a medium level of popularity. Don’t want to wear it out or anything. Most popular last year? For boys, Jacob and Michael. For girls, Emily and Madison. Madison?! (Link via kottke.org.)
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The name game
Some interesting statistics on baby names from the Social Security website, and lots of way to slice and dice the data: in the 1970s, the decade in which I was born, Jeffrey–this is how I spell my full first name; please, not Jeffery–was the 15th most popular name for boys. (The data come from Social […]
3 replies on “The name game”
This is a really interesting site. Try a name like mine, Eugene – it’s currently ranked 548. It was ranked 118 in the 60s when I was born. It’s declined every year except 1997 and 1999, when it had blips in popularity for some reason.
It’s always amusing to think about what will happen in 70 years when all the Brittanys and Kaylas are living in nursing homes – I wonder what the popularly named nurses will be called? Chances are, like today’s Savannahs and Sierras, they’ll be named after cars – “Meet my daughter, Corolla, and her husband Escalade.”
I love resources like this. My own first name doesn’t even appear in the list, not surprisingly, since my grandfather, father and I were the only people I’d ever known with the name; in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) covering those people with Social Security numbers that have died since about 1962, the name does appear as a given name, but only 68 times out of 70.3 million records.
I go by my middle name, “Thomas,” though, which is sadly very common: its most uncommon year was 2002, though it still ranked 36th; in the 1960s when I was born, and specifically in 1962, it was 9th. It was in the top 15 throughout the 1960s, ranking as high as 8th during two earlier decades, then suddenly dropping to 21st in the 1970s; from then on it seems to be steadily declining. “Thomas” appears as a first name over half a million times in the SSDI.
The name I’d always liked for a potential son, though, is nicely unusual (at least in the U.S.): “Kieran” made its most popular ranking, at 528th, in 2000.
And, FYI, the link for the SSDI referred to in my previous comment is: http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/