Baby Names

This is a really fun website.

You type in a name and it plots the popularity of the name since 1880. I of course first typed in my own name, and learned that it wasn’t very common (110th most popular) when I was born, but was very common (4th most popular) in the 1990’s. Which means that most of the Samanthas out there are much younger than I am. Does that mean people might expect me to be younger than I am because of my name? There are a lot of names that I associate with older people, but I can’t think of too many that I associate with young people. Maybe that’s just because I don’t know many kids, though.

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2 thoughts on “Baby Names

  1. Had a play with the name graph for a bit of fun.

    Noticed something interesting.

    If I check 'girls' and type in 'Sa' – instead of your full name (Samantha) – it gives me all the appropriate 'Sa' variants.

    Now if we look to the left of the graph we can see approx. 7(?) names yet if we hover over the right – we can see twice(?) this amount.

    Now, if we assume that all these names came from the same 'root name' (a big assumption) – then, it would appear, to my untrained eye, that as we progress in time more and more name substitutes, for the same name, are being used.

    Maybe a way for parents to mark their child as 'unique'?? – i.e., the parent likes the currently popular name Sarah but to differentiate their child from the other million Sarah's they decide to spell it Saira, etc???

    May also be a display of multi-culturalism too perhaps? For example, the merging of cultures could lead to different name variants and spelling being used – but all basically, the same 'root' name??

    Tis a pity the graph isn't in 'percentage of population' though – this may give us a better idea of whether 'x%' of the population always gives their child an 'Sa' variant

    Funny thing too – typed in some 'bible' names (Peter, Mark, Luke, John, James, etc.) – 'most' of these peaked around the 1950s-60s then have been in sharp decline since – possibly indicating the shift away from the 'common' religions? (No…this post is not meant to be nasty towards Catholic people – just an observation)

    Anyways – tis a bit of fun – pretty graph

  2. Even more interesting, at least for me:

    I generally truncate my friends names to one syllable, if possible (an ex girlfriends name was Nicola – I didn't like calling her Nic).

    Put in first letter or syllables, and there is an incredible covariance through time of like-rooted words (in the sense they have the same first phonetic syllable.

    Try: Be, Al, Sar, Da, Ch

    A couple of interesting effects: The baby-boom in the early 40's seems large for most names, but "a" starting name actually troughs in that time period.

    I'm reminded of Asimov's claim:

    "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny …"

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