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The long tail of baby names

Posted on May 11th, 2008

Parade magazine today reports on the top ten names for baby boys and girls this year:

Jacob

Emily

Michael

Isabella

Ethan

Emma

Joshua

Ava

Daniel

Madison

Christopher

Sophia

Anthony

Olivia

William

Abigail

Matthew

Hannah

Andrew

Elizabeth

Ok, but I seem to meet more and more kids with one-off names. Isn’t the long tail of names getting longer every year?

[Tags: long_tail ]

Tagged with: everythingIsMiscellaneous • long_tail

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6 Responses to “The long tail of baby names”

  1. Andy Weinberger, on May 12th, 2008 at 7:35 am Said:

    Hey, I’m finally in the top ten of something! And our grandmother Emma has made a comeback. It is a name I have been fond of anyway.

    Andy

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  3. AKMA, on May 12th, 2008 at 12:22 pm Said:

    What, no “David” or “AKMA”?

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  5. Andy Weinberger, on May 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm Said:

    Actually, I’m surprised about “David,” as someone yesterday said it is always in the top ten (before I saw this list). Well, if AKMA were spelled Akma it would probably be found high up in the list.

  6.  

  7. miles, on May 12th, 2008 at 2:10 pm Said:

    I took a digital history class where we used the baby name wizard (at http://www.babynamewizard.com/.....voyager) to track historical trends. For example, you can see changes in immigration trends by comparing results for Mary with results for Maria. Maybe the one-offs signal an important change that we’ll be able to pinpoint 50 years from now.

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  9. Douglas Galbi, on May 12th, 2008 at 3:48 pm Said:

    In the UK, over the past two hundred years the slope of the power law approximating name popularity has gotten flatter, after not changing much for the previous four hundred years.

    “Getting longer” seems to me to be not a good way to think about name popularity or the “long tail.”

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  11. Dave F., on May 23rd, 2008 at 2:02 am Said:

    As a matter fact, it is a power law graph…
    http://www.galbithink.org/name.....s.htm

  12.  

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