The good people (I’m really just guessing here) at Zatonovo have a cool little tool where you can specify a name and it will show you how popular that name was from 1912 to 2012 on a state by state basis. I played with it for a while and there were a lot of interesting things that I noticed. But rather than just point them all out, I’ll pick two and ask you to see what you find. Here are my two:
- Lloyd has gone from about 70 per state down to about 1.
- Brad isn’t nearly as popular a name as I thought it was.
1) Gretchen is a name for old ladies. (Or, as I was told once by a student, “Gretchen? That is a name for an old lady with a bunch of cats.” For the record, we currently own 0 cats.) It is a name for old ladies here too. My German teacher sent me an obituary for a Gretchen who was born in 1928.
2) Jeremy had a huge surge in the 1970’s. Not surprising – we know about a half dozen American Jeremys just here at our little base.
Interesting, Lloyd, thanks for sharing.
It’s interesting to see how names move across the country. Jessica was only popular in New York, then in California, then to other states. By the eighties, it was a very popular name.
Something is going wonky with the site for me – it is jumping around the years. Probably operator error.
Liam was only allowed in New York and every other year in California until the 90s. Is this another example of Brad’s “Jessica” phenomenon?
The good people of New Mexico loved the names of my children Maria and Josiah. Joanna’s name enjoyed slight popularity in various states, though not for long.
My name hit its high point in 1952. It’s not quite a grandma name but close.
If is is any consolation, when I was a kid I wanted to rename myself Deborah. Or Cheryl.
I think my mom wanted to name me Deborah Eileen.
I do like my name, Deborah Esther. If you look those ladies up in the Bible, you will realize how very afraid you should be of me. ????