Playing with Social Security names database

MellyH

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***Now that I have the names downloaded and the code written, let me know if you have any particular rankings you want me to do!***

So, it seems like a trend that the names that are getting popular now were popular 80-100 years ago, probably because enough time has passed that we don't associate our mums' and grandmothers' generation with them. I was trying to use NameVoyager to pick out names that were popular back then but less popular now, and it was slow going, so I ended up downloading the Social Security (USA) database of names going back to the 1880's and writing some code (I'm a scientist so I am writing code to play with data all day long) to rank the names. The metric that ended up giving me some fun results was sorting the relative strength of a name in 1910 versus 1970 (dividing the total number of births registered with that name in 1910 by the total number registered with that name in 1970). Here are my picks from the top 200 - I liked heaps of them, which is why I settled on those years. Let me know if you have any other years/rankings you want to see though:

'2' 'Dorothy'
'8' 'Margaret'
'12' 'Alice'
'17' 'Hazel'
'20' 'Marie'
'22' 'Grace'
'23' 'Evelyn'
'24' 'Clara'
'28' 'Ruby'
'29' 'Josephine'
'32' 'Eva'
'32' 'Mabel'
'33' 'Rose'
'35' 'Beatrice'
'39' 'Viola'
'48' 'Eleanor'
'50' 'Mae'
'51' 'Marion'
'57' 'Eva'
'59' 'Rosa'
'63' 'Stella'
'68' 'Violet'
'70' 'Cora'
'75' 'Marjorie'
'85' 'Genevieve'
'94' 'Sophie'
'98' 'Georgia'
'100' 'May'
'107' 'Rosie'
'108' 'Harriet'
'114' 'Marian'
'121' 'Adeline'
'122' 'Bonnie'
'124' 'Isabel'
'124' 'Isabelle'
'130' 'Dora'
'140' 'Eliza'
'149' 'Eloise'
'150' 'Madeline'
'154' 'Matilda'
'154' 'Rosalie'
'161' 'Lila'
'162' 'Adele'
'169' 'Edythe'
'177' 'Gwendolyn'
'177' 'Isabella'
'186' 'Eleanore'
'188' 'Gracie’
 
This is awesome! I'm very into these kinds of names. Could you run a list from the same years for boy's names? We have had a girl name picked out for 2 years (Nora Jane) but for the life of us cannot agree on a boy name!
 
Boys names are tougher because they don't seem to have the same trend, or at least the trend cycles don't seem to match up the same way. Here's the top 50, they're all a bit 'out there' still!

'1' 'Hyman'
'2' 'Meyer'
'3' 'Dock'
'4' 'Taft'
'5' 'Hazel'
'6' 'Isidore'
'7' 'Ora'
'8' 'Rosevelt'
'9' 'Dorothy'
'10' 'Fay'
'11' 'Buster'
'12' 'Ellsworth'
'13' 'Gladys'
'14' 'Green'
'15' 'Claud'
'16' 'Wilber'
'17' 'Waldo'
'18' 'Elmo'
'19' 'Bernice'
'20' 'Isadore'
'21' 'Orval'
'22' 'Helen'
'23' 'Ruth'
'24' 'Ocie'
'25' 'Gussie'
'26' 'Isom'
'27' 'Lillian'
'28' 'Sol'
'29' 'Morton'
'30' 'Omer'
'31' 'Author'
'32' 'Elmer'
'33' 'Mose'
'34' 'Chas'
'35' 'Ellwood'
'36' 'Lessie'
'37' 'Orville'
'38' 'Otho'
'39' 'Clare'
'40' 'Mildred'
'41' 'Ruby'
'42' 'Johnie'
'43' 'Booker'
'44' 'Estel'
'45' 'Finis'
'46' 'Hollie'
'47' 'Ignatius'
'48' 'Smith'
'49' 'Judge'
'50' 'General'
 
Okay, so, I added the criteria that the boys name had to have over 500 births in 2010 (so it hasn't gone COMPLETELY out of fashion) and now it looks more useful!

The first number is the rank in the 1930/1970 comparison, and the second number is the number of births in 2010.

179 Jack 8507
224 Leo 1937
282 August 645
445 Pierce 544
473 King 701
476 Everett 1177
478 Jasper 1177
479 Milo 654
508 Porter 600
509 Sam 548
511 Arthur 726
512 Silas 1626
516 Charlie 1426
520 Henry 6380
525 Walter 780
543 Leland 956
565 Albert 693
573 George 2364
574 Emmett 1274
620 Max 3843
624 Emerson 635
654 Donald 761
671 Oliver 4656
672 Isaiah 8534
675 Edgar 1642
682 Julius 932
697 Walker 649
719 Louis 910
729 Marvin 632
751 Riley 3637
753 Owen 8167
819 Harrison 1487
823 Leon 665
824 Jackson 11786
832 Joe 592
872 Frank 1072
936 Grady 1015
946 Edwin 1697
947 Raymond 1576
949 Rocco 725
 
I love the name Evelyn! That's what Lucas would be called if he had been a she :haha:
 
Okay, here's my latest. Now I'm trying to pick out the names that are rapidly increasing in popularity, so I compare the change between 1990 and 2000 to the change between 2000 and 2010 and rank by the biggest relative increase. Again, it works much better for girls than for boys! I'm really struggling to work out what the boy 'trend' is. I'll keep playing.

Girls:
'Charlotte'
'Amelia'
'Aubrey'
'Genevieve'
'Eva'
'Lucy'
'Ruby'
'Liliana'
'Evelyn'
'Iris'
'Callie'
'Audrey'
'Elise'
'Kayleigh'
'Alanna'

Boys:
'Oliver'
'Landon'
'Weston'
'Levi'
'Eli'
'Graham'
'Miles'
'Roman'
'Henry'
'Lucas'
'Tyson'
'Max'
'Felix'
'Ashton'
'Jeremiah'
'Abel'
'Emmanuel'
'Micah'
'Adrian'
'Emanuel'
'Colton'
 

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