[OC] Does your name give away your age? These 50 names are almost exclusively tied to a single generation

    by MurphGH

    42 Comments

    1. **Data source:** U.S. Social Security Administration (2024)
      **Tools:** Python / SQL / Hex / Figma

      Out of 1,087 names with over 50k lifetime births, I used a rolling 20-year window to find the maximum concentration of births for each name. These 50 were selected from the 169 names that crossed the 75% threshold, prioritizing lifetime volume and names with exceptionally high spikes.

    2. Aidan/Aiden having different entries, and those entries being tied to separate timelines, is wild.

    3. Madison strikes me as one that has a very well documented start date (1984, after Splash) which doesn’t seem to be accounted for here. But to my surprise, the graphs support your thesis.

    4. How is “Jennifer” not dominating the late 70’s? I think my class was about 20% Jennifers.

    5. iknowiknowwhereiam on

      So many from my generation (Jessica, Amanda, Lindsey, Heather, Courtney, etc.) and yet the biggest of them all, Jennifer, isn’t there. I guess it’s popularity helped push it past the xennials?

    6. Still a long time til the Jaden /Jayden’s work their way out of the school system I see…

      IYKYK

    7. Did Lori, Tammy, Tracy and Tonya sound as stupid in 1960 as Brayden, Jayyden, Kaden and Aiden did in 2004?

    8. I’m 56, when around people in my age group I meet other Brians pretty regularly, at my last job there were 3 in our group of 11. I think names definitely trend, and some classical names never go out of style, think biblical names like Mark, John etc.

    9. How is “concentration” defined? For example, Kelsey has a score of 82.3% for the period 1986-2005. Does that mean that 82.3% of all Kelseys in the dataset were born in that window? Something else? (I’m sure that it *doesn’t* mean that 82.3% of all babies born in that period were named Kelsey!)

      Also, names appear to be color-coded by some sort of gender assignment. Was the analysis done separately by gender (that is, could there be two different ‘Dakota’, ‘Kim’, or ‘Leslie’ peaks?) or is the color assigned on some basis by the figure’s creator?

      As an aside, some sort of visual cue might be a good idea for the last few names on the chart that run up against the last year of the dataset. Those names may not have peaked yet.

    10. pick-and-hoop on

      Interestingly enough I don’t know anyone with any of these names. How could that be?

    11. Surprised there’s no Arya for the mid 2010s
      GoT seem to have a choke hold on children’s names for a few years.

    12. JustStudyItOut on

      What if all the different spellings of Caitlin were mushed together. I don’t think I’ve met a Caitlin that spells their name the same as another.

    13. Jeff is kinda surprising. Seems like I knew a fair bit of late 80s early 90s Jeffs growing up. 

    14. In the US. No other English speaking country (including England) would ever be dumb enough to call a son ‘Chad’.

    15. I’ll never understand why people name their kids all the same shit. Even worse when it’s a deliberately incorrectly spelled name, to be “unique.”

    16. Nope. My name is in the book of Genesis. Gonna be around as long as Jews and Christians are.

    17. Aidan, Jaden, Kaden, Brayden, Aiden and Jayden right next to each other is sending me the US baby name trends are so funny

    18. Obfuscated_Opossum on

      Inverse of this – one of my coworkers is a 26 year old guy named Harvey. Really sweet guy but I’m so amused by the mismatch between how young he is and the old man name.

    19. Helios___Selene on

      Didn’t realise Scottish/Irish names are so popular in the usa recently.

      Isla, Paisley, Aiden/Aidan, Liam, harper.

    20. Aiden kaden jaiden brayden ahaha the memes were correct all along

      Edit: also a little surprised to not see lauren here because I’ve only ever seen late millennials like myself have that name

    21. The amount of Lisa’s I know in my immedaite cohort (late 80s/early 90s) makes me think this data is flawed. Could be anecdotal but looking at most popular names also make me doubt it.

    22. Could it be that these names dominate based on what celebrities are dominating the industry in that timeline ?

    23. I’m a middle millennial and I have never met a Dustin. Dustin is like a name in a gay porn, not the name of a real person.

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