Popular Baby Names in the US, 1880-2018

This is a visualization of baby name popularity data from the US Office of Social Security. The data stretches back to 1880, although it's most reliable after 1937 (when Social Security actually began).

The dataset is interesting because, in a very literal sense, it represents us. If you were born in the United States (and you have a relatively popular name), then you, your parents, and many people you cherish are in these curves. Many of their experiences -- from world wars to culture wars to subtle dynamics of gender and race -- are in there too. The data is significant because the decisions behind it are significant; parents sometimes spend months deciding what to call their kids.

It's a big decision, because names matter. They precede you, frame how you're perceived, and their connotations matter, especially when you're looking for a job. So when parents choose names, they generally do so seriously, and with a mind to both the current cultural context and a larger historical one. World War II did much to reduce the popularity of "Adolph," but for a while, Gump was just as effective at depopularizing "Forrest." Parents consider many things both grave and banal when naming their children, and taken collectively they tell richly detailed stories about our ancestors and our society. This visualization aims to bring some of these stories to the surface and make them accessible.

Interactive Tool

Drag the sliders or the circle marker on the graph to explore. Right now, this is showing that: , was the # most popular Boy Girl name ( 8.1546 % of baby boy s were named John in 1880 ). Inwas the #most popularname (% of babys were namedin). Rank # Percentage %

or the point along the path:

or the number of similarities: You can also change the scale:or the point along the path:or the number of similarities:

Bye Bye Bertha (Greatest Changes)

Here you can view the names whose popularity rose or fell the most over a particular duration. Right now, this is showing the: to names that changed the most from to for Boys Girls Both Genders tonames that changed the most fromtofor You can also change time period using the slider:

...And Stop Calling Me Shirley! (Gender Drift)

Shirley was a popular unisex name until 1935, when its male popularity plummeted. This might have had something to do with Shirley Temple's debut film, Bright Eyes, which came out in December, 1934. Many names have changed gender over time, but these changes are most often male-to-female. One possible explanation for this asymmetry is that, because of gender inequalities, women fare better when they take masculine names (while men fare worse with feminine ones). This matches up with many of our lived experiences and is supported by many stories and studies. Over time, it could lead to a pattern of female appropriation followed by "male flight," which seems consistent with the data:

Hispanic Names

Many Hispanic names have been growing in popularity at similar rates. For example, see this chart showing the most similar names to Julio (auto-generated, not hand-selected). Not every name is Hispanic, but most are. This might have less to do with the names themselves and more with the fact that the U.S. Hispanic population has grown exponentially (from 1.5% in 1940 to 18.1% in 2017). What if we compared that population growth to the name popularity growth? If Hispanic parents give their children (exclusively) Hispanic names, they should rise at about the same rate. To do this, we can make a list of Hispanic names and sum their popularities. I'm using these lists and some friends' advice for reference, and I'm excluding names also popular for non-Hispanic Americans. I'm also only considering boy names, because there's a lot more overlap for girl names. Even though we're excluding many popular shared names, it shouldn't change the overall trend if parents choose them at the same rate.



all none For the most part, the lines rise with the same slope. This means that the number of boys given these Hispanic names is proportional to the number of Hispanic Americans, which makes sense. However, over the past 15 years, the lines have split. Now Hispanic boy names are less popular than you'd expect given the size of the Hispanic population. Barring effects of age cohorts or birthrate, the simplest explanation is that Hispanic parents are choosing different names. They could be choosing other Hispanic names we haven't included, or they might be starting to favor either Anglicized names or names that are still traditionally Hispanic but not exclusively so. According to at least one account, that's been happening with Middle-Eastern names. Either way, it's consistent with recent reports showing fast Hispanic-American assimilation. It's also interesting to look at which Hispanic-American names are growing faster than the average. Santiago, Maximiliano, Mateo, Emiliano, and Cruz seem to be "beating the market" and rising in popularity even as Hispanic first names are generally declining in popularity.

Tiny Stories

Acknowledgements

This was made by Andrew Ross, and the charts use the excellent library d3.js. The sliders use noUiSlider and the name select uses chosen. You can check out the full source code for the visualization here and some details about how I'm calculating name similarity here. The main chart was inspired in part by of this cool visualization of Fortune 500 companies. If you want, you can download the data by name or by year.