
Name Age Calculator - oxplot
http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html
======
berbc
Oh [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=Neo)

~~~
DanKlinton
For some reason in 2001, Osama named stopped being popular
[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=osama) Barak in 2008 became even more
popular... Soon not so much :) [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=barak)

~~~
rmxt
Spelling it as the president spells it -- Barack -- shows a jump from
nonexistent to "something" right around 2009. I wouldn't go so far as to call
it noise because it's more than just coincidence, but it's still only ~0.003%
of the male population born that year. (60 births/(0.5*4,000,000 total
births).

------
ra1n85
>Sorry, "Bort" is not in the boy's name database.

Outrageous.

~~~
mason240
Robert'); DROP Table Students; was also not in the database.

~~~
polysaturate
Little Bobby Tables

~~~
makeset
Reference: [https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/)

------
hxmc
Thanks Johnny Cash: [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=Sue)

~~~
yellowapple
Peculiarly, there were dozens of instances of boys named Sue prior to Shel
Silverstein writing "A Boy Named Sue", which makes me suspect that the song in
question might very well have been a true story.

Curiously, the popularity of naming boys "Susan" [0] also peaked more than
half a decade before the song was published. ("Sue", in contrast, peaked even
earlier in the mid-40's, though it seems it made a comeback in the late-80's).

[0]: [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=Susan)

------
Toenex
More interesting than it might first appear. If you try a name like 'Stanley'
you can see the devastating effects of the war years. You also see a
resurgence in the name 20 years or so later, I'd guess when people want to
remember a parent or grandparent in their own child.

------
kuzmin
The increase of "Alexander" starting from the mid-80s looks really weird:
[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=Alexander)

It's easy to see why names such as "Buzz" have the curves that they have
(space race), but it's hard to trace any event that influenced more common
names. For example, check "Jacob", "Justin". Does anybody have an idea as to
why these curves have this shape?

~~~
dm2
"Amy" is another interesting one, what influenced that?
[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=Amy)

I just figured out that it shows a random one when you don't enter a query,
that's cool.

Other spikes: Linda, Jordan, Mason, Deborah, Beth, Paige, Laurie, Chloe,
Megan, Stella, Stacey, Kim

It seems like female names are much more likely to have sharp spikes in
popularity verses male first names.

~~~
Flenser
Little Women apparently:
[http://nameberry.com/babyname/Amy](http://nameberry.com/babyname/Amy)

The other names show similar shapes:

Meg: [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=Meg)

Jo: [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=Jo)

Beth: [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=Beth)

The second bump for Meg could be due to Meg Ryan?

------
mwexler
Jeremiah ([http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=jeremiah)) has an interesting rise in the
70s, but then disappears in the 80s (like so many things) but comes on strong
again by the 2000s. The double humps doesn't seem to appear all that often,
even clicking on the other examples in these HN comments, some of which appear
to show spikes but are still normalish humps, not bimodal.

~~~
cafard
Heaven help us, but that might have been the Three Dog Night song "Jeremiah
Was a Bullfrog."

~~~
cafard
Another explanation, slightly more flattering to the parents, occurs to me:
the popularity may owe something to the movie "Jeremiah Johnson", which came
out about then.

------
onion2k
[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=buzz)

Interestingly, "Buzz" seems to track events and anniversaries in the space
race quite neatly. Toy Story had no impact.

------
trumbitta2
Sooo... Are there many American girls named after a typical old-style italian
macho name?

[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=Gustavo)

~~~
netrus
If by many you mean about 100: Apparently yes.

------
lifebeyondfife
'Sorry, "Bort" is not in the boys name database.'

------
benpbenp
Ha! I got my own name when I first landed on the site. For a second there I
thought the real story was that they'd somehow exploited a third party cookie
but it appears to be a coincidence.

------
darkFunction
Wow, 'Ace' is really taking off- [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=ACE)

'Adolf' seems uniformly credited to just a few poor souls-
[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=ADOLF)

------
amyjess
I legally changed my name last year, so I have the fortune of having two sets
of names to play with.

Here are my observations (note that I'm not actually posting my deadname here,
but I'll still post my thoughts on it):

Old first name: My parents were spot on. I'm well within the typical age, and
the median year was only four years off from my birth year. It had a very high
spike in the 70s and 80s, and it's since gone down to 1970 levels and stayed
there.

Old middle name: On the other hand, my parents gave me an old man's name. The
age range _starts_ at 47, and I'm 30. It peaked in the early '60s and was a
curiosity by the time I was born.

New first name (Amy): I'm a little off here, but not by much. I'm only a year
outside the typical range. When I was born, it had already been in decline for
a few years, but it had far from bottomed out yet.

New middle name (Jessica): Spot on. Median age is only three years away from
my actual birth year, and I was born really close to the peak. Oddly enough,
when I was putting together my new name, I originally wanted Jessica to be my
first name, but I ended up changing my mind and making it my middle name
because I liked Amy better. Shame it crashed so hard in the last few years.

~~~
solarmist
Actually, I'd say your parents were spot on with both your first and middle
name, because middle names are usually picked in honor of someone in their or
their parent's generation (usually a relative).

The other thing is for the "classiest" names (ie most fashionable) you want to
be at the head of the trend not at the height of popularity as it's become
"common" by then.

~~~
solarmist
And, to me, having a modern middle name (Jessica) actually sounds out of
place.

~~~
amyjess
That's interesting.

Funny thing is, I went back and forth so much. I could've very easily ended up
with a much less common middle name.

After choosing "Amy" over "Jessica" for my first name, it took me a while to
settle on a middle name. For a while, I wanted it to alliterate and very
nearly chose "Abigail" (which was uncommon when I was born but is very common
now). Then, I decided I wanted something truly uncommon and nearly decided on
"Sunset" (it isn't even in the name database here, so I guess it was more
uncommon than I thought!). Ultimately, I began to regret not picking "Jessica"
as my first name, so I made it my middle name.

No regrets, though. My new initials form a tri-ligature, so I'm really glad I
went with it.

------
jasonhanley
These should be normalized for the number of births per year.

~~~
rhiever
Here's another version that normalizes for births per year:
[http://rhiever.github.io/baby-name-explorer/](http://rhiever.github.io/baby-
name-explorer/)

Enjoy!

------
mywacaday
Some strange looking mortality on low volume names, I used Irish names, Male-
Darragh, Female-Clodagh. E.g Clodagh goes from 13 to 5.5 between 2009-2010

~~~
Rudism
I don't think a drop reflects mortality, only in popularity as a baby name--
the graph is showing you how many new people with that name were added to the
total pool over time.

------
Enindu
It says, "Sorry, Enindu is not in the boys names database".

~~~
maxerickson
The source omits names that have less than 5 occurrences from the published
data:

[http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html)

(So perhaps you aren't in the US and your name wouldn't show up in the source
data, or perhaps you are in the US and your name is uncommon)

~~~
Enindu
Yup. I'm not from US. And also my name is uncommon too. Even in my country.
You know what, I didn't see enyone who has my name so far. I think I have a
pretty unique name..!

------
mickeyp
Funny how the curve fits historical incidents. Searching for "Adolf" and the
name gains in popularity in the 1910s and 1920s; dips in the 1930s as Nazism
rises; and nosedives in the early 1940s as WWII kicks off. Interesting.

Contrarily, the name "Winston" jumps in the 1940s.

------
rmason
You don't think its as simple as people choosing one of the ten most popular
names for a given year do you?

I found it exceedingly accurate with most of the people for a given first name
I know being born plus or minus five years of the peak for that name in
popularity.

~~~
DanBC
> You don't think its as simple as people choosing one of the ten most popular
> names for a given year do you?

Maybe, but why do those names become popular? William, Harry, George and
Charlotte are obvious (British royal babies) and other names have interesting
rises and falls.

------
rheotron
Anyone else think this is kind of odd? [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=ian)

~~~
slazaro
Girls named Ian? Or the fact that there's a lot of variation? Because with
such small numbers, there's going to be a lot of random noise.

------
jyotiska
This is really interesting: [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=Khaleesi)

~~~
tbomb
No love for Sansa though

------
betaclass
I wish they wouldn't have curved/smoothed the graphs. Since it's by year,
there are discrete points and values. When you curve a line it has
implications for the underlying data, which in this case are incorrect.

~~~
rhiever
I originally didn't smooth the data, but it looked way too jagged and crappy
for many of the names. Ultimately, I erred on the side of aesthetics and
sacrificed the ability to look up exact numbers in the graph. Rest assured,
though, if you want the exact numbers you can download the underlying data of
every graph with one of the links under the graph.

------
kornakiewicz
[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=barack)

I find this funny.

~~~
madcaptenor
This happens with presidential names in general. See Lyndon
([http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=lyndon)) or Dwight
([http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=dwight)).

~~~
kornakiewicz
I know where it came from, I wonder why there's no evidence of Barack older
than 10, i.e. Barack Obama.

------
karmakaze
Many of the common traditional english names drop off around 1995. Tried a few
to find what's taking up the slack. Jack[1] was an unexpected one. Lots of J
names in general, but few that pick up around 95.

[1] [http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=M&Name=Jack)

------
monknomo
My parents were ahead of the curve, apparently.

~25 when I was born, ~750 and climbing now.

If only I had a trust fund that looked like the growth curve on my name
popularity...

------
HeyLaughingBoy
Travis peaked first in 1980 which was when the famous Levi's commercial first
aired.

Would love to see someone correlate hit TV shows with popular names.

------
scholia
Much as I admire Randy Olson, there's been a much better version of this
around for at least 10 years: Baby Name Voyager.
[http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager](http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager)

~~~
rhiever
Thank you for the kind words. :-) Although that app you linked is a bit
different - it's showing when names were popular over time. This app goes one
step further and calculates _how many of those people are still alive_ and
makes a best guess at how old someone is based solely on their first name.

I also made a version similar to the Baby Name Wizard that look solely at name
popularity here: [http://rhiever.github.io/baby-name-
explorer/](http://rhiever.github.io/baby-name-explorer/)

And I suppose it's just a matter of aesthetics for which one you prefer in
that case.

Cheers!

r

------
sgb_QQ
This is cool. I used that same SSA data for a fun agency project for J&J about
a year ago: [http://hellomynamemeans.com/en/](http://hellomynamemeans.com/en/)

~~~
kidsthesedays
Infinite loop for me.

~~~
k__
Yepp.

Polling to the max...

------
arcatek
Funny how Mael has won quite a lot of hype in the past years (it's still a
rare name, sure, but it's much more common now than when I first
...acquired... it).

------
danielharan
Has anyone used this to get inferred stats on a database of people's names?
I'd be especially interested in applications for e-commerce analytics.

------
impostervt
"The median living boy named Johnie was born around 1948 and ranges from 51 to
79 years old."

This is what happens when you're #4...

------
Vintila
Looks like my mother was born in peak Suzie.

What do they say happens to those who don't label their axis? I've
forgotten...

------
viiralvx
Welp, I knew my Igbo name wouldn't be in the boy's name database. :/

------
matiasb
"Obama", "Britney"

~~~
oaktowner
Weird, check out Brittany.

[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=brittany)

~~~
cbd1984
Kathy is almost as tight of a peak:

[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=kathy)

My point is, the tightness of the peak might have nothing to do with Ms
Spears.

~~~
maxerickson
Spears' first name is Britney. That plot is a little more particular:

[http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gend...](http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-
calculator/index.html?Gender=F&Name=britney)

------
kabdib
Vernor is interesting :0)

------
Raphmedia
Very accurate for mine!

------
thomasfl
Surprisingly accurate

