Popularity of Names

This morning, I had the strange idea to research how popular Anna and my names have been historically. This was prompted by a question by one of my Japanese e-mail penpals, who wondered which baby names were popular in the U.S. now. I had no idea so I googled the topic and was presented with the Social Security Administration's website, which features a large amount of data. I made some quick graphs on the findings in OpenOffice 2.0, so without further ado, here they are!

"Anna" held down 2nd place from 1880 (when data on her name was first recorded) until 1889. The name hit a low in 1971 at 106th place, but has been steadily regaining popularity ever since. In the 2004 census, "Anna" was the 20th-most popular name for girls in the US.

It seems that Jeremy had it's peak in 1976, when it was the 14th-most popular name for American boys. It used to be an extremely unpopular name (905th in 1942), but came out of obscurity in the 1960s, when it moved from 619th place (1960) to 70th place (1970). I'm not sure what social factors were behind this surge, but I would be interested to know if anybody has any ideas. "Jeremy" came in 111th in the 2004 census.

If you want me to make a similar graph for your name, just send me a comment or an e-mail and I'll see what I can do!