BeeLine: Name Nerd

I have to admit that I am a name nerd.

I have always enjoyed names. In fact, as a kid I used to develop football rosters where I made up all the names on a mythical college team I had created---Ohio Tech University. My roster included hometowns as well. I also "recruited" nationwide much before it was in vogue. I would come up with a cool sounding name and then flip open a road atlas to determine which state my player was from. Notre Dame had nothing on my recruiting footprint.

Soon after I started dating my wife I had to test her on the "name" thing. I was not looking to name my children John, William, Mary or Elizabeth. I was interested in something more unique and memorable for my progeny. Thankfully, she was of similar mind. We had both boy's and girl's names that we liked even before we got engaged. However, that did not stop me from pouring over baby name books once we were expecting some seven years later.

A lot has changed in the baby name business in the last 30 or 40 years. The most important change has been the accessibility of information on the internet. Instead of relying on a dog-eared baby name book of 1,000 names, that did not give you much more than the meaning behind the name, you can now peruse 10,000 names at the click of a mouse. You can also learn exactly how popular the name is, what other people think of it on 7 dimensions (strong? sexy? sophisticated? smart?) and other people's experiences with the name.

It is almost too much to take for a self-professed name nerd.

Especially with no one to name. That privilege has now fallen to my children who rightfully have their own ideas on what they want to name their children.

My daughter just went through the whole "name" thing recently and she passed this excellent blog post to me on "How to Name a Baby" from Tim Urban at WaitButWhy.com.

Tim has a lot of great tips and info in his blog on naming a baby but what I really enjoyed were some of the insightful charts and graphics he used. I thought I would share a few of his in addition to a couple of my own. I can't resist a good name or a good chart. There is little doubt this will be one of my favorite posts of all time

A lot of the cool insights you can get about baby names is from a tool called Voyager that is part of the Baby Name Wizard website. This tool allows you to graph the popularity of a given name over time.

For example, my name Scott looks like this.

Tim Urban would call Scott a "name fad". You can tell it is a name fad if it looks like a witch's hat.

Witch hat or not, my youngest daughter named her first-born Scott after me. Smart move in my book. How can you go wrong with a family name? Well, it is possible. My father's first name was Hector. That name went back centuries in my father's family back to England. Thank goodness my mother vetoed that idea. Scott is #322 for popularity now. It was #15 in the 1960's.

How about a "name fad" for a girl?

Jennifer. #1 girls name in the 1970's. Now #220.

Or fad names. Different decades.

Historically, family names have been the predominant means of naming a baby. That is one of the reasons that if you went back to the 1880's, one in every four boys was named John, William, James or George. One reason--they did not have access to baby name books or the internet. What was the one book people had? Yes. The Bible.

Let's look at William. William is probably the most enduring boys name out there. It was #2 in the 1880s, #4 in the 1920's, #7 in the 1960's and was still #5 in 2014. It has fallen on the chart because names are much more dispersed than they use to be so it is not used as much. However, it has consistently been one of the top 10 names for boys for over 130 years.

This supports the point Urban makes that there used to be a lot more conformity in names than there is now. In 1950, only 5% of parents picked a name that was not in the Top 1000 baby names. In 2012, 27% of parents were completely weird and picked a name outside of the Top 1000. That is why William is still a top 10 name even though it has fallen in overall usage.

Of course, those names, once in circulation, begin to become more and more popular as the name is heard by more people. What begins as weird becomes cool with time. I first became aware of this baby name phenomenon when I read "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner who dedicated an entire chapter to names. Here is what they wrote about name patterns.

There is a clear pattern at play; once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder.

It isn't famous people who drive the name game. It is the family just a few blocks over, the one with the bigger house and newer car.

Parents are reluctant to poach a name from someone too near---family members or close friends---but many parents whether they realize it or not, like the sound of names that sound "successful".

But as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents begin to abandon it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower-end parents many not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower-end parents, meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper-class parents have broken in.

If you want stark facts on the change in name patterns consider this chart. Every green name is more popular than every red name of the list. Coming to a school near you are a lot more Paisley's, Lyric's, Gunner's and Gael's than will be children named Philip, Keith, Kelly or Courtney.

You will notice from that there is not one name on the list above that begins with the letter "F". It seems that names like Frank, Fannie, Fred, Freda, Florence and Floyd are completely out of favor. The most popular female name now that begins with "F"? Faith. For a boy? Francisco.

However, "I" names have made a comeback. Isabella or Isaac lead the pack.

On the other hand, I have a feeling that this "I" name could be soon falling out of favor. ISIS.

The girl's name Isis has already dropped 757 spots just since last year on the baby name popularity list.

Of course, many times all it takes to bring a name back is to have a century or so pass so that it no longer bring back memories of your father's friend or your grandmother.

Which name is #1 or #2 on most names for girls right now? Emma.

The other trend is that names have become much more uni-sex, in particular the use of what have traditionally been male names being co-opted for use by the other sex.

Lynn is a good example. Does anyone remember Lynn Swann? You are unlikely to see another Lynn catching touchdowns for awhile. In fact, you are not likely to find any girl Lynn's either looking at the graph below.

Madison is another male name that has been taken over by the girls. Madison has been a Top 10 female name since the 2000's but is now beginning to fall. It was exclusively a boys name until the 1970's.

A closer look at Madison on the male side. Fair popularity in the 1880's. Made a comeback in the 1980's and 1990's before it was totally snuffed out by the girls in the 2000's.

What about those names that my wife and I talked about when we were dating?

Our first born girl (born in 1979) has a name that did not hit the Top 1000 until 2012. We still think she might be NAME ZERO with the name (and spelling) we gave her which relates back to the idea we had when we were dating. We know at least three people personally who have used "our" name.

Our second born girl (born in 1981), whose name we did not have picked out when we were dating, still has a name that is not in the Top 1000.

Our son (born in 1983) was ultimately given the name we were talking about in 1972 when we were dating. Our frame of reference at that time was that we knew almost no one with that name. Look at the 1950's where our schoolmate names came from in the graph below.

However, during the 1970's the name became more and more popular. During the 1980's it was the #17 most popular name. We hesitated when it came time to name him as we saw the trend changing but we stuck with it. After a decade, it just did not feel right to abandon it for a passing name fad.

Even name nerds can only take so much after awhile.

After all, it is just a name. It is the person that name comes to represent is what gives it true meaning.