Anonymous wrote:The people who are going to name their kid a popular name are not going to read this thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just for fun, I plugged the top names and their percentage of births in 2020 into a spreadsheet so I could look at the numbers a bit. I thought this was interesting:

Olivia (#1) was given to 1% of all girls born in 2020.
Harper (#10) is the name that is exactly half as popular as Olivia, with .5% of all girls named Harper.
Willow (#48) is exactly half as popular as Harper, with .25%
Margaret (#126) is exactly half as popular as Willow, with .124%
Milani (#267) is half as popular as Margaret, with .062%

I like these stats because they show how few kids get any one name. But I also like how they kind of show what kinds of names are popping up at what level of popularity, and it's about what you'd expect. Olivia is classic and popular, so it's common. Harper and Willow are pretty but sound more modern, so they are "on trend" but a lot less common than Olivia. Margaret is a classic that is not in favor, so it's much lower down the list. Milani is an unusual name.

I think these are all great names but different kinds of parents are going to feel differently about how common, classic, modern, or unusual they are. The rankings really don't tell the whole story.

Don't forget to consider number of live births. Remember that the Baby Buster, aka Gen X, era, started in 1965 and live births in the US dropped below 4M births each year (the Baby Boom years all had more than 4M live births). It went down to a low of 3.1M from 1973-1976 and did not climb back up to 4M until 1989. So the most popular Jennifer era (where about 4% of the girls were named Jennifer) was during low birth eras. So about 65K girls were named Jennifer. Now, there are 4.1M live births per year and at 1%, that means about 21K girls are named Olivia. If you don't take into account number of live births, it would seem to be 4x as many girls named Jennifer in the 1970's than Olivia now, but it's really more like 3x as many.

In the 1980's live births hovered closer to 3.5M per year.

https://www.infoplease.com/us/population/live-births-and-birth-rates-year

Anonymous wrote:Just for fun, I plugged the top names and their percentage of births in 2020 into a spreadsheet so I could look at the numbers a bit. I thought this was interesting:

Olivia (#1) was given to 1% of all girls born in 2020.
Harper (#10) is the name that is exactly half as popular as Olivia, with .5% of all girls named Harper.
Willow (#48) is exactly half as popular as Harper, with .25%
Margaret (#126) is exactly half as popular as Willow, with .124%
Milani (#267) is half as popular as Margaret, with .062%

I like these stats because they show how few kids get any one name. But I also like how they kind of show what kinds of names are popping up at what level of popularity, and it's about what you'd expect. Olivia is classic and popular, so it's common. Harper and Willow are pretty but sound more modern, so they are "on trend" but a lot less common than Olivia. Margaret is a classic that is not in favor, so it's much lower down the list. Milani is an unusual name.

I think these are all great names but different kinds of parents are going to feel differently about how common, classic, modern, or unusual they are. The rankings really don't tell the whole story.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you do Robert?

#36 in DC (not OP).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While interesting, none of this helpw much because those stats are across the US, and some names are highly concentrated in an area. When my DS was born, at his first well baby visit the pediatricin exclaimed "oh! Another Alexander, he's our 3rd one this week!". Sigh. It wasn't very high on the list when he was born, but clearly in our demographic it was popular. He has consistently been one of two or more. He doesn't really care (nor do I), but you would never have guessed it based on the SSN rankings for his year of birth.

You can look up the stats by state or territory, though. I didn't know this when I was pregnant but someone on here told me. That can help you avoid a name that is locally more popular. The name we used wound up being more popular locally than nationally, but has since fallen out of favor locally while staying pretty steady nationally. I think there was a little blip of increased popularity here and then people started laying off the name. Kind of a self-correction. Either way, we've only ever met one child with the same name, on a playground, and she was younger than my DD. She's never been in a class with another.

Even looking it up by state is unlikely to help a lot if you live in, say McLean or Arlington, which probably has more in common with NW DC than Roanoake.

Then you look at stats for both VA and DC, and probably MD too. It's just information. None of it is determinative and you have to decide for yourself how much weight to give it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While interesting, none of this helpw much because those stats are across the US, and some names are highly concentrated in an area. When my DS was born, at his first well baby visit the pediatricin exclaimed "oh! Another Alexander, he's our 3rd one this week!". Sigh. It wasn't very high on the list when he was born, but clearly in our demographic it was popular. He has consistently been one of two or more. He doesn't really care (nor do I), but you would never have guessed it based on the SSN rankings for his year of birth.

You can look up the stats by state or territory, though. I didn't know this when I was pregnant but someone on here told me. That can help you avoid a name that is locally more popular. The name we used wound up being more popular locally than nationally, but has since fallen out of favor locally while staying pretty steady nationally. I think there was a little blip of increased popularity here and then people started laying off the name. Kind of a self-correction. Either way, we've only ever met one child with the same name, on a playground, and she was younger than my DD. She's never been in a class with another.

Even looking it up by state is unlikely to help a lot if you live in, say McLean or Arlington, which probably has more in common with NW DC than Roanoake.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While interesting, none of this helpw much because those stats are across the US, and some names are highly concentrated in an area. When my DS was born, at his first well baby visit the pediatricin exclaimed "oh! Another Alexander, he's our 3rd one this week!". Sigh. It wasn't very high on the list when he was born, but clearly in our demographic it was popular. He has consistently been one of two or more. He doesn't really care (nor do I), but you would never have guessed it based on the SSN rankings for his year of birth.

You can look up the stats by state or territory, though. I didn't know this when I was pregnant but someone on here told me. That can help you avoid a name that is locally more popular. The name we used wound up being more popular locally than nationally, but has since fallen out of favor locally while staying pretty steady nationally. I think there was a little blip of increased popularity here and then people started laying off the name. Kind of a self-correction. Either way, we've only ever met one child with the same name, on a playground, and she was younger than my DD. She's never been in a class with another.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While interesting, none of this helpw much because those stats are across the US, and some names are highly concentrated in an area. When my DS was born, at his first well baby visit the pediatricin exclaimed "oh! Another Alexander, he's our 3rd one this week!". Sigh. It wasn't very high on the list when he was born, but clearly in our demographic it was popular. He has consistently been one of two or more. He doesn't really care (nor do I), but you would never have guessed it based on the SSN rankings for his year of birth.

Also, doctors and nurses really need to stop saying stuff like "oh look our third baby with this name this week." New parents are stressed and sleep-deprived and that is the kind of comment that would have made me feel like crap at the time, and that I would remember forever. Rude!

Anonymous wrote:Can you do Robert?

Anonymous wrote:I think people freak out over name popularity way too much.

I’m a Jennifer born in the 1980s. I very rarely meet other Jennifer’s. There were none in any of my classes as a kid. Off the top of my head I can only think of one I talk to regularly. So it’s not like I’m running into Jennifer’s all the time and we’re all getting confused over who is who.

I always wonder if it says more about the parents, that they want to be seen as cool and different and non-conforming by naming their kid something that isn’t popular. If you like a name, use it. Who cares.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just for fun, I plugged the top names and their percentage of births in 2020 into a spreadsheet so I could look at the numbers a bit. I thought this was interesting:

Olivia (#1) was given to 1% of all girls born in 2020.
Harper (#10) is the name that is exactly half as popular as Olivia, with .5% of all girls named Harper.
Willow (#48) is exactly half as popular as Harper, with .25%
Margaret (#126) is exactly half as popular as Willow, with .124%
Milani (#267) is half as popular as Margaret, with .062%

I like these stats because they show how few kids get any one name. But I also like how they kind of show what kinds of names are popping up at what level of popularity, and it's about what you'd expect. Olivia is classic and popular, so it's common. Harper and Willow are pretty but sound more modern, so they are "on trend" but a lot less common than Olivia. Margaret is a classic that is not in favor, so it's much lower down the list. Milani is an unusual name.

I think these are all great names but different kinds of parents are going to feel differently about how common, classic, modern, or unusual they are. The rankings really don't tell the whole story.

The tricky part is after you get out of the top 25 (or maybe 50), it becomes much more regional/SES-specific. So look at Margaret (126) - I know a handful of baby Margarets, and it's on my list if I have another girl. But #125 - roughly the exact same number of baby girls are born named Remi. Never met one, never even heard of it. So that tells me that Remi is more popular in certain cohorts, like Margaret is more popular in my cohort. Vivienne is 260; Dakota is 261. Same frequency of names being given nationally, but probably being given by moms about a dozen years apart in age. This makes it harder to tease out how likely you are to have several in your Girl Scout troop - it's simple to say that there will probably be some if you pick a top 10 name, but in the 100-300 range it's much more about which little pocket of namers you fit into.

Anonymous wrote:Just for fun, I plugged the top names and their percentage of births in 2020 into a spreadsheet so I could look at the numbers a bit. I thought this was interesting:

Olivia (#1) was given to 1% of all girls born in 2020.
Harper (#10) is the name that is exactly half as popular as Olivia, with .5% of all girls named Harper.
Willow (#48) is exactly half as popular as Harper, with .25%
Margaret (#126) is exactly half as popular as Willow, with .124%
Milani (#267) is half as popular as Margaret, with .062%

I like these stats because they show how few kids get any one name. But I also like how they kind of show what kinds of names are popping up at what level of popularity, and it's about what you'd expect. Olivia is classic and popular, so it's common. Harper and Willow are pretty but sound more modern, so they are "on trend" but a lot less common than Olivia. Margaret is a classic that is not in favor, so it's much lower down the list. Milani is an unusual name.

I think these are all great names but different kinds of parents are going to feel differently about how common, classic, modern, or unusual they are. The rankings really don't tell the whole story.