Monday, May 08, 2006

Cool Link

I came across this web page and I thought it was just about the coolest thing ever. It's the Baby Name Wizard NameVoyager. It's a graphical representation of the top 1000 names given to American babies each decade since 1880.

We've already picked out names for our baby whether it's a boy or a girl, but it's still interesting to look through the names and see how they've changed over time. Like did you know that Agnes was the 939th most popular name for boys in the decade 1900-1909? Strange but true. And before 1940, if a baby was named Allison, it was more than likely a boy, whereas today Allison is almost exclusively a girl's name.

Anyhow, check it out, type in your favorite name, and see how popular it is or once was!

1 comment:

Preeti said...

There's another fun version of baby name rankings at the website of the U.S. Social Security Administration. Scroll down to the bottom of the following page:
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

Did you know that the name Rebecca peaked in popularity in 1973 and 1974 (when it was #10)?

Also, a baby's name is a strong predictor of his/her mother's education level. You can read more about it in the last chapter of the book Freakonomics (excerpt at: http://www.freakonomics.com/ch6.php).