Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This Harrison was early 70s rather than late 70s, though Harrison Ford was still a known name back then.

Still, Harrison wasn't even in the top 200 names in the 70s. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1970s.html

Compare with 136 in the 2010s. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names2010s.html

One of the things to take note of between those two charts is that the most popular names are less popular. Parents are choosing distinctive names rather than common names.

In 1970, the top five male names represent 2.5 million births. Michael (the most common name) was 707,377 of them.

In 2010, the most common name was Noah with 183,258 births. In 1970, a name with that much popularity would be #20.5 between Thomas and Timmothy.

That 2.5 million again... in 2010s that's 19 names.

... Another visualization of the data. https://namerology.com/baby-name-grapher/ This looks at the top 200 names for boys and girls over time. However, the downward slope isn't fewer overall births but rather the reduction of popularity of the most common names.

And another visualization of the data - The Evolution of US Boy Names: Bubbled https://youtu.be/WQv99sEPDsw and Girl Names: https://youtu.be/qVh2Qw5KSFg

The thing to watch in those is the size of the largest bubbles. The 2014 bubbles look fundamentally different than the 1974 bubbles.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: