charged current: 2006

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Saturday, December 2, 2006

This figure shows the popularity of a given name by rank (e.g., 1 is most popular) from the Social Security Administration as a function of time. John and William were numbers 1 and 2 for several decades, but have been in decline over the last 50 years. Note how they both step down in the 1920's. Joan, Barbara, Amy, and Terry are qualitatively similar; they have all peaked, seen their heyday, and are now in decline. Both Nathan and Kate show a significant upturn at 1970, a dip in the 1990's, and now a steady increase. Timothy has very interesting periodic variations after its peak in about 1960 - roughly every 10 years. Brian and Todd fall out of the top 1000 names before 1925 and 1936, respectively. Both peak around 1970. Wade is roughly constant, varying by about a factor of two over 100 years. Emma is qualitatively distinct as number 3 in 1885 and number 2 in 2005. I would have put more names on this graph, but it was getting crowded. If you are interested, check out this link.