👀 My name is...
My friends are at that age now where they start having kids (more accurately... friends of friends are having kids. Most of my friends are childfree because we're all either mentally ill or broke), and I've begun to notice a trend in names over the last few years. Gone are the days of babies being called Rahul or Aditya or Priyanka - now it's all about the Shayans, the Veers, the Viaans and Riaans. I think one of my friends' kids is called Kiaan? I forget, honestly. After the first few, it begins to get a bit blurry.
This shifting of trends in names is obviously not a new thing; the list of popular baby names changes every few decades, sometimes even every year, depending on current events and, of course, pop culture. But some names stand the test of time - or even cycle back into popularity after having disappeared for a couple of centuries.
Namerology's Namegrapher tool is built to help you see just that. It's an interactive tool that shows you the historical popularity of baby names in the USA. Type in a name, and the graph will tell you how popular it was and exactly when. Of course, it kinda sucks that it's only limited to the USA, but I can still have some fun with it and try to see if any of the iconic TV characters of the last few years had babies named after them…
An uptick in girl babies being named "Britney" in the late '80s and all through the '90s? How very... unsurprising.
Of course, according to Namerology itself, the data is useless if you don't know how to analyse it. So, this holiday season seems to me like the perfect time to go into a deep dive into the social science behind baby names. After all, I do have to make sure no one else I know names their kids something regrettable.