February 10th, 2005

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Internet
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Fun with Graphs: Flickr Friends and Baby Names

This morning I discovered two nifty charting sites. First, via Lifehacker, there’s this Flickr graphing tool. You can see my graph here. Basically, it allows you to view associations between Flickr contacts. This is pretty cool, but there are any number of ways to make this far more compelling, using photos and tags.

Even more cool, though, is the the Baby Name Wizard. It’s an awesome graphing tool that enables you to view the popularity of baby names over time. For example, I see that the popularity of my name peaked with children born around 1960, and has declined since then. If you compare that with a name like “Madison”, you’ll see its popularity climbs in a steep rise since about 1980 (Moonlighting, anyone?). It’s quite fascinating to see which names were popular when: Marvin peaked in the late twenties, Lynsey in the early eighties and Imogene in about 1918. Some classic girl’s names from the nineteenth century, such as Anna or Charlotte, are apparently enjoying a resurgence. This ought to help parents avoid some of the baby-naming pitfalls I’ve mentioned.

Comments: 4 Responses so far

Lynsey
February 10th, 2005
2:17 pm

Lynsey might be due to Ringo Stars girlfriend…that’s who I am named after

[Reply]

Andrea
February 10th, 2005
3:21 pm

I think Madison was sparked by Splash — people didn’t get the joke. Madelyn was the main character in Moonlighting, no?

Try typing in Chris/Kris/Crys/Chris or other variants. I see now why every one of my sister’s friends (born in late 70s) has much the same name.

This tool is cool. And good timing for me right now.

[Reply]

Derek
February 12th, 2005
9:39 am

Another interesting thing: try just typing a single letter. The trends include “F” names declining precipitously since the turn of the 20th century, “C” and “M” names being pretty steady, “X” ramping up from nothing, and “I” names scooping down through the mid-century, while being more popular at either end. Apparently, no one gets named Adolph anymore either.

[Reply]

jesse
November 10th, 2009
4:22 am

i need a graph on the popularity of the name jesse

[Reply]

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