In our Cliff thread from yesterday, sociologist Philip Cohen pointed to his discussions in the decline in the popularity of the name Mary.

One thing that came up was the traditional trendiness of girls’ names. So I thought I’d share my thoughts from a couple of years ago, as reported by David Leonhardt:

Andrew Gelman, a statistics professor at Columbia and an amateur name-ologist, argues that many parents want their boys to seem mature and so pick classic names. William, David, Joseph and James, all longtime stalwarts, remain in the Top 20.

With girls, Gelman says, parents are attracted to names that convey youth even into adulthood and choose names that seem to be on the upswing. By the 1990s, of course, not many girls from the 1880s were still around, and that era’s names could seem fresh again. This search for youthfulness makes girls’ names more volatile — and increasingly so, as more statistics about names become available and parents grow more willing to experiment in an attempt to get out in front of the curve. The 1,000 top girl names accounted for only 67 percent of all girl names last year, down from 91 percent in 1960 and compared with 79 percent for boys last year.

And you’ll probably enjoy these graphs, if you didn’t see them when they came out:

It’s like that y’all.