Whenever family or friends of mine visit from overseas, they marvel at just how huge the United States is.

I mean, come on. Just look at the size of this bad boy superimposed over Europe.

Source: google

Texas alone can fit several European nations in it.

So it only makes sense that regions of the USA are vastly different from each other. Heck, even different states that border each other are different in terms of food, culture, customs, popular interests, and language. I mean, people don't say "ya'll" up in New Jersey, nor could I find a single person in Texas who knew what a "hoagie" was.

But as it turns out, we're not that different after all from state to state, especially when it comes to baby names. In fact, we're pretty darn unoriginal; just look at the Social Security Administration's map of most popular baby names from state to state to see what I'm talking about.

While the single most popular name varied a bit around the country, there was pretty much a few names that secured all the top spots across the fifty states, which is an interesting anthropological observation if you ask me. Though it would be cool if a fairly unique name just came out of nowhere in, like, one of the Dakotas. Anyway, in 2016, it seems like everyone was naming their girls Emma, Olivia, and Ava. For dudes, William, Oliver, and Liam. You can over over each state in the map too to see what the most popular name in your state is.

I can understand William and Liam (I mean those Hemsworths, am I right?) but Oliver kind of seems like an odd choice. Unless people are suddenly obsessed with Oliver Platt as much as he's obsessed with this puppy in this photo.

A post shared by Oliver Platt (@oliverplatt) on Oct 25, 2016 at 1:05pm PDT