My colleague, Jenny, blogged about name popularity today over at Blogging Bout Boys. She gave a link to the Social Security Administration website, which allows you to look up names and their popularity through the years. It’s quite interesting.
For example, Cody, who was named for his dad’s best friend, who died in a vehicle accident shortly after high school graduation, was only 952nd on the list back in 1951, the first year the name appeared on the list. It peaked in 1993 and 1994 and last year it was 122nd.
Rachel, of course, is a fairly common name. 100 years ago, it was 154th in popularity. It stayed in that range up until about 1967, when it jumped up to 105th. It peaked in 1996, two years before her birth, at 9th on the list. Last year, it was 75th.
Andrea didn’t really become popular until around 1938. 100 years ago, it was 774th on the list. It peaked in 1978 at 23rd and last year, it was 71st. Her nickname, Andie, is not even in the top 1000 names for any year, which is hardly surprising. I wanted to name her Andrea specifically so we could call her Andie.
I was surprised to find that Logan was 646th on the list 100 years ago, but didn’t even make the top 1000 for 21 of the past 100 years. It peaked in 2007 at number 17, and last year it was 19th. I didn’t realize it was that common of a name.
Unbeknown to my parents, who tried to pick unique names for my sisters and me, my name’s popularity began to peak around the year I was born. The lowest rank it received in the past 100 years was 119th in 1959 and it was in the top 10 from 1978 to 2002.
My parents fared better in their quest for originality with my sisters’ names. Gretchen hasn’t ranked above 191 and last year, it was the lowest-ranking it has been in 100 years at 945th. Trina didn’t make the top 1000 until 1941, then went missing from the list from 1947-1951. It peaked in 1970 and 1971 at 172nd.
Check it out. It’s fun to see the various histories of names.
How did the names in your family rank? Were you surprised at any of the results?
Sarah,
Wanna totally waste time looking at names? Check out http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager. (You need Java to view it properly.) I spend WAY too much time playing around with this interactive wizard, finding out the trends in names. (I pretend it’s research for fiction projects.)
Kate
Thanks, Kate, because I didn’t waste enough time on this name list! =)
Seriously, I’m sort of a name junkie too and I always tell myself it’s for fictional names as well. Thanks for the link. I will definitely be checking that out.
Aw, the little white lies we tell ourselves in the name of fiction/procrastination.
I always like hearing about names and find it interesting to read what others focus on when they think of names. Thanks for that, and also for the resources embedded in this post. Very nice!