It’s always interesting–and fun–to compare the popularity lists of different states because there are inevitably a few unexpected surprises. Some name will pop up at #3 in one state when it’s 30 or 40 across the country. And often a sort of state personality profile will emerge–be it trendy, traditional, or stuck in the past–and regional similarities as well. In the current roster, one thing that’s noteworthy is that most of the names to step out from the crowd are in the boys’ column–with the girls there is a remarkable uniformity of choices across the country.
Regionally, the Northeast presents the most conservative picture, with Michael–long displaced in most other areas–still tops in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. But move north to New England and the picture changes, with names like Logan and Ethan making their way to the top. In the South–and nowhere else–William rules, at the head of the list in seven states, with Anthony in first place in Florida.
The Midwest is split between Jacob and Ethan, but shares one oddity: the name Gavin is in the Top 20 in just about every state–as high as #3 in Wyoming–whereas it’s #32 nationally. So why Gavin in the heartland? I wish I knew. The West is more idiosyncratic, with a large spattering of Hispanic names (3 of the Top 10 in California and Arizona), and a state like Wyoming that presents a laid-back, cowboyish image via top-ranked Ethan, Logan, Wyatt, Brayden, and Hunter.
But what I find especially intriguing are the names that pop in one particular place. Here are some examples of such male and female names, with their national ratings in parenthesis:
BRODY (105) #10 in North Dakota
CARTER (80) #9 in South Dakota
GIANNA (90) #10 in Rhode Island
ISAAC (41) #4 in Idaho
JOCELYN (50) #10 in California
NEVAEH (31) #4 in New Mexico
OWEN (56) #6 in Wisconsin
WYATT (69) #7 in Wyoming
Tags: Booklyn, Brayden, Jacob, Midwest, New England, popular names, South
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, baby name popularity, boys' names . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
If you added the different spellings of these names, you’d get a lot higher rating for Brayden, Jayden, Kaden, Hayden and Aidan in every state. All are very popular in North Dakota, where I live, and surrounding states. Brody and other similar sounding names like Brady and Brayden have been quite popular here for years. The trendier, cowboy-rodeo sounding names are all very big in North Dakota for boys — Wyatt, Cody, Colton, Holden, Logan — along with Biblical names like Caleb, Isaac, Isaiah, Ethan. Gavin is also common too, probably because it fits the general pattern. People make up names as well, but they sound like all of the other names that are big for boys — Tayson, Trayton, Tayten, Dayton, Trysden, Tarson, etc. Waylon is not uncommon. I’ve also seen a few boys named Rowdy and Maverick. The head of the state teacher’s association is a 50-something man named Dakota Draper and there is a female 50-something teacher in the school district where I live named Dacotah (nickname Coty) . The female teacher was named after a female rodeo star from the 1940s that her father liked. I have no idea about the man. A place name I see occasionally for girls is Medora, after a very pretty tourist town in the western part of the state that was a favorite spot of Theodore Roosevelt. There’s a girl named Medora in the high school here, another elementary age Medora, and I just saw a birth announcement for a Medora Apple, daughter of North Dakota natives who are modern-age hippies and named her older twin brother and sister Jasper and Juniper. I doubt anyone here associates Medora with the poem by Byron or his illegitimate daughter by his half-sister. The town of Medora was named after Medora, daughter of a New York banker and wife of the Marquis de Mores, who ran a failed meat packing plant in the town in the early 1900s. I’d definitely consider Medora a name that is, if not unique to North Dakota, at least pretty strongly associated with it.
If you combined the spellings of the girls’ names, you’d see that Haley, Kaylee, Kaitlyn, and Alexis are all still very popular, probably in the top 10 or 20. Sarah Palin’s kids would fit right in in a high school in North Dakota. I’ve seen several girls named Piper on elementary school rosters.