Names and Numbers
I wanted to re-name a character in a story, so off I went to the Social Security database for some era-appropriate information (commercial baby-naming sites are prettier if you want to graph your baby’s name, and more useful for selecting by ethnic or cultural background, but for snapshots of the U.S. back in time, I like SSA.gov). My character was born in the mid 1970s, but of course I had to check out last year first:
There are fewer Emilys than ten years ago; Emma and Sophia are still popular, Isabella is a new favorite; Elizabeth, Jacob, and Michael are holding steady, and goodbye Hannah:
Going back into the 1980s, Madison had yet to permeate national consciousness:
I chose 1974 for my character’s birth year:
No surprise that Jennifer, Jason, Michael were favorites, but I was amazed by how much—four times as much as today’s number one names. Elizabeth always seems to bring up the top ten.
Consensus dips close to 1980s level into the 1960s and 1950s, then through the first half of the twentieth century top names consistently got around five percent. The first year that in SSA data is 1880:
I love tracking the appearance and disappearance of particular names, the Nellies and Idas. And 8% John or William, 7% Mary? Of course it’s impossible to diagnose the millions of motivations behind them, but the decline of a consensus or frame of reference seems pretty inarguable. I wonder how, too, it relates to our more informal age—much easier to refer to everyone by first name if they’re not all the same. Except for those early and mid 70s Jennifers, Jasons and Michaels, the decline in uniformity has been steady. Hooray melting pot!
