Have you noticed that the 2012 baby name data is up at the Social Security Administration site? I always think I’m going to have a lot to say about it, and then the data is finally here and I can’t remember what I was going to look for!
I was interested to see what the name Charlotte would do; it’s now at #19 so it’s still climbing.
I was also interested to see what would happen with Evelyn, and I see it seems to be stopping: the last four years, its rank has been #39, #39, #27, and now #29.
It seems like we’ve had more interest in the name Sloane in the last few months than in the last few years combined, so I wanted to see what it would do: it went up just a bit, from #510 to #480. I’ll be interested to see that one again in a year.
I was interested to see if Hadley and Adelyn would keep climbing, and they did.
I checked in on some of my Sad Not To Use list (which is not an actual written-down list—it’s just the names that come to mind when I think of what my favorites are). Genevieve went from #232 to #228. Eliza went from #255 to #225. Penelope went from #169 to #125. Annabel went from #537 to #519, but that’s misleading because there are tons more spellings. Josephine went from #182 to #160. George went from #165 to #166, so I guess my pro-George efforts aren’t working. (YET.)
I checked on George right away too (along with my other kids names). I like that he dropped one. I just met a maybe 5 year old George at the park yesterday and there’s a 4 year old one at my kids school. So by the time my 2 year old gets there, he’ll likely be the 3rd one at the school. Seems like he’s not as rare as I’d expect locally.
Why did Sloane with an E rise 30 places, while Sloan without an e dropped from 894 to 978? That is a big drop! Weird.
I have also seen Blakely mentioned here a bit more lately, and see that it made a huge jump from 928 to 545!
I feel like there’s some kind of pool/betting/bingo situation for this data set, but there’s so much variability. Maybe someone designates names and previous year’s rankings and people guess what the new one will be? Maybe choose names that are very close between girls and boys and see which way they go the next year? I think, collectively, we could come up with a good game.
I checked Karl for you, and saw it’s been off the chart for a few years.
If we ever have a boy, he’ll be a George, so I’m actually hoping it doesn’t climb!
I know quite a few people with little Lincolns, so I’ve been eager to see the data on that. From 178 to 132. And what a fast climb from 710 in 2000!! … The others I keep hearing repeated in my own circle are Henry, Jack and, for the girls, Madelyn/Madeline/Madeleine/Madison (all the “Maddie” variants).
I have a 5 year old George & he’s the only little one I’ve encountered. It seems to have stopped its drop the last few years. Perhaps after a period of relative stability it’ll slowly start to move up again.
Eliza is on of my sad-not-to-use names too. (It only came on my radar after my kids were born.) I always like to check for the names I would have used if my kids had been the other sex. We never found out if they were boys or girls until they were born, so the names feel very “almost used” to me: Charlotte or Adelaide for the pregnancy that turned out to be my son, and Theodore and then Elliot for my daughters.
Well, my day just got significantly less productive. And bonus, my future daughter’s name is still off the radar! That’s all I needed to know :)
I happened to see this story on Yahoo and came over to your site immediately, figuring you’d have Things To Say. :) This is the data from a decidedly pop culture view: http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/popular-baby-names-2012-why-zoe-saldana-duck-201403622.html
Sadly I can never view SSA website is it because I don’t live in America?