Re:Names that decreased in popularity from 2020 to 2021
by silisili on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @12:38PM
(#34248715)
I really like that namerology link. It's fun to put in names of aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc and see how accurate it is. Almost all of my aunts and uncles spiked in the 50s (Rich, Mark, Donna, to name a few), which is when they were born.
Girls: https://youtu.be/qVh2Qw5KSFg
Boys: https://youtu.be/WQv99sEPDsw
The thing about this is that it shows that its not some other name becoming dominant, but rather that names are becoming more distinct - fewer children born with a certain given name each year.
For example, 1997 (the last year of Michael being the most common boy name) it only had 1.88% of total births - while in 1967, Michael accounted for 4.63% of total births.
Girl name popularity changes more rapidly than boy names.
The other "this is kind of interesting" is that similar names (e.g. names that start with an L) have similar popularity.
https://namerology.com/baby-name-grapher/
You can see the "less common names are more common" with the shape of the graph there since the SSA data is only for the 1000 most common names. That the total is smaller indicates that there are more names beyond the 1000 most common that are becoming more prevalent overall.
That tool lets you clearly see that "Luke" and "Lucas" have a similar shape. Michael and Michelle (F) had a similar peak too.
Another interesting one to look at is the name "Leslie".