We’re honored to have Michael Shackleford, the inventor of the Social Security baby name popularity list, as today’s nameberry guest blogger.  Shackleford played a pivotal role in the history of American baby naming by constructing the first national count of the Top 1000 names.  Shackleford, who can now be found at the Wizard of Odds, talks about the hows and whys behind his ground-breaking work.

The most frequent question I get about my baby name popularity lists is why I started making them.  To give some context to why, my name is Michael, and I was born in 1965.  At that time, and for every year from 1961 to 1998, Michael was the most popular boys name in the United States.  When I was in elementary school, there were always one or two other Michaels in the same class.  When the teacher called on “Michael,” we all had to ask, “Which one?”  At my first job, in a fast food place at Knott’s Berry Farm, there was a big board with everybody’s name and daily cash register errors.  When I was hired, there was already a Mike Smiley on the list.  So I had to become Mike Sh.  After that, everybody would whisper, “We better be quiet, Mike Shhhhh is here.”  To this day, every time somebody calls out “Mike” in public, I have to turn around and investigate.  Usually, I’m not the intended recipient and end up looking like I came in second place in a popularity contest, when the other Michael is warmly identified.  Over the years it has become very annoying.

In 1992, I took a job with the Office of the Actuary at the Social Security Administration headquarters in Baltimore.  My main duty was to estimate the effect to the trust funds given a hypothetical change in Social Security law.  I used samplings of Social Security records, calculating the monthly payment under the current law and the proposed changes, took the difference, and adjusted for the sample size.  I had lots of interesting data at my fingertips to make such calculations.  One of the more interesting files was a 1% sampling of Social Security card applications.

Five years later, in 1997, my wife was expecting our first child.  Naturally, after my negative experiences as one of many Michaels, I was not about to give my child a popular name, but I no longer had any idea what the popular names were.  Keeping up to date was not easy at the time, especially for girl names, which go up and down in popularity much faster than boy names.  It was only my intent to stay out of the top 25 or so.  Many people incorrectly assume I take the extreme position of advocating a name nobody has heard of.  No, a normal name is fine with me, just as it is not too trendy or conformist.

To determine what the most popular names were at the time, I wrote a simple program to sort the Social Security card data first by year of birth, then by gender, and then by first name.  It takes a while to go through a tape of millions of records, but after about an hour the results came in.  What I got back was a huge document of first name popularity lists dating back to the 1880’s.  I believe my eyes at that moment were the first to ever see an accurate nationwide sampling of given names.

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At the beginning of this year, the UK ’s Office for National Statistics let it be known that they wouldn’t be issuing their annual lists of most popular names due to recessional budget cuts, and a collective moan was heard across the name-o-sphere.  (Can you imagine what would happen if our Social Security list didn’t appear one Mother’s Day?) 

Well, I don’t know what happened–maybe the uproar was too deafening–but suddenly,  nine months later, their lists of top 100 boys and 100 girls names  in England and Wales have now materialized.  Definitely a case of better late than never.

Once upon a time I used to think that, since we share the same language, the Yanks and the Brits would have similar taste in names.  That was before I married a Brit myself and it came to naming our daughter, when I saw just how different our perceptions of most names were.  And though things have evened out to some degree with the rise of the Internet and the international sharing of opinions, looking at the top English girls’ names today (we’ll take up the boys’ next week), we can see that there is still quite a divide.  (more…)

One of the most fun things about running nameberry, as opposed to being a visitor, is that you get to peer behind the scenes and see which names people are actually searching for.  Some of the most visited names on nameberry are ones you’d expect: Ava and Aidan, Lucy and Logan.  And then there are the stylish nameberry favorites as detailed in a recent blog: Beatrix, Penelope, Atticus.

But a bit further down on the list, we’re noticing less expected names that our visitors seem to be inordinately curious about.  These are the choices that are not on any popularity list – not even a sophisticated, fashion-forward one like nameberry’s – yet are attracting more than their share of attention.

Our conclusion?  These are names to watch.  It may be only the more adventurous baby namers who are actually using them at the moment, but we predict that in a decade, most will feel more familiar – perhaps way more familiar – than they do now.

These names of the future include:

Girls

ANAIS

ANASTASIA

ANNABEL

ANWEN

ARDEN

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It’s become a truism that once a name gets too popular, no one wants to use it anymore.  (Which reminds me of the famous Yogi Berra saying: Nobody goes to that place anymore.  It’s too crowded.)

So what do they use instead?  Often, a name that’s the same but different.

Consider Emma, 2008’s Number One girls’ name.  Part of Emma’s success, I’m sure, is that it resembles Emily, long the girls’ top name, but has an individual pedigree and style all its own.

An older spin on this theme was Jessica, which took over the top spot from big sister Jennifer.  It works on the boys’ side too, with Jacob and Justin picking up where Jason left off.

More interesting, though, are the names that are just now appearing on the horizon as similar-but-different substitutes for names that are becoming overly popular.  The appeal of these names is obvious: They seem to offer fresh spins on favorites that are feeling a bit tired.

The down side is that so many people tend to flock to them, they’re often in danger of becoming – like Emma – overexposed themselves.

Here, some current favorites and the daughters (and sons) they’ve spawned.  Interestingly, some popular names inspire new choices that may cross gender lines.

Girls

ABIGAIL

Abel, Abraham, Abram, Abelia

ADDISON

Adelaide, Adeline, Adriel, Adele

ALEXANDRA

Alexa, Alexis, Alexia, Alec, Alexei

ASHLEY

Ashlyn, Asher, Ashira, Ashton, Ashby, Ash, Cash, Nash

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Back in February, a topic was posted on the Girls’ Names section of our Message Boards suggesting that people list their current Top Ten favorite names for girls, and it’s been running ever since.  What’s especially nice about this for us is that  it’s given Pam and me a fascinating look into the specific likes and loves of the nameberry community.  After all, for a long time, through our books and on the site,  you’ve gotten to know our opinions on both general categories of names and specific examples–and now the tables have been turned.

And we’re so gratified to see that we’re almost universally in synch (we’ll be dealing with dislikes and ‘heresies’ tomorrow), and that for the most part you love the names we love, affirming  to us that we have the most enlightened, most thoughtful, most tasteful, group of name lovers in existence.

Proof to us was in the pudding of names that showed up most frequently on your Top Ten lists, all possessing both substance and style.  So even though the thread is still alive, I couldn’t resist tallying up the Top Names of the Top Tens to date.

The most popular three are, in order:

BEATRIX

PENELOPE

CLEMENTINE

Followed by:

WILLOW and

DELILAH, and then:

ADELINE

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