Journal
Charts and notes on American naming culture, data, and the names that shape generations.
The intuition is that names start in New York and Los Angeles and spread inward. The state data says the opposite: trends ignite in Wyoming, Utah, and the Dakotas, and the big coastal states are the last to arrive.
Compare every baby name's popularity in each state to the nation and a hidden map appears: football stadiums in Iowa and Tennessee, Somali and Amish communities, a language of its own in Hawaii, and an entire naming ecosystem in Utah.
In 1987, Jessica, Ashley, and Amanda accounted for 152,634 girls. In 2025, the same three names accounted for 2,854.
Kunta in 1977. Arsenio in 1989. Moesha in 1996. Each name appeared out of nowhere, peaked, and vanished. 145 years of SSA data reveals the names that were perfect cultural timestamps.
In 1947, 99,692 babies were named Linda. One in fifteen American girls born that year carried the name. It was the most successful single name in 145 years o...
The name Theodore peaked in 1920 at 3,219 births. That number held as the all-time record for 105 years. Then the name declined, spent decades in the backgro...
Two trends in the 2025 SSA data look like opposites. One pool: Mateo, Thiago, Luna, Santiago, Valentina, all growing 6x to 130x in twenty years. The other: M...
Most pop-culture names show up loud and disappear before kindergarten. Kehlani is in a different category. The name went from barely visible in SSA records t...
The most surprising data in the SSA archive isn't the unusual names. It's how fast a normal name can disappear. Names that peaked with tens of thousands of b...
Your birth year has a sound. Class rosters carried it before you knew it was there. Mary and John in 1900. Linda and James in 1950. Jennifer and Michael in 1...
A comeback name has to be old enough that it isn't still attached to someone's parents, but not so old that it sounds like a museum label. There's roughly a...