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Quick answers
What is the SSA baby-name file?
A U.S. compilation of given-name frequencies based on Social Security card applications, published from 1880 onward with a lag. It is a historical series, not a crystal ball.
Does ONS cover the whole UK?
The well-known baby-name release is for England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate publications. Say which office.
What does Statistics Korea publish?
Annual given-name frequency information that researchers use to watch Korean naming fashion, including shifts between Sino-Korean and native Korean names in dated years.
Why do names rise and fall together?
Lieberson’s A Matter of Taste: parents want distinction inside a style, so endings and neighbours move as clusters.
Can I say what last year’s #1 was?
Only if you cite the office and the year after that office has published. Do not invent a live #1 in this atlas’s voice.
Do celebrities cause the waves?
Sometimes they spike a name (see celebrity-influence). Lieberson argued they are over-credited relative to internal fashion.
Media treat the annual release like a sporting result. That is fun and also how years fall off the sentence.
Comedy about “there are five Avas” is trend culture in the classroom.
Rituals
- Release day articles — A dated #1 becomes a headline.
- Office sweepstakes — Colleagues bet on a list — harmless if the year is real.
- Parent forums on “too popular” — Peak-avoidance in public.
- Retro name parties — A decade theme as fashion self-awareness.
Portrayals
- Freakonomics Book · 2005 · Levitt & Dubner
Made U.S. name charts a pop object; still cite SSA years when you repeat them.
- Mad Men (names as period) TV · 2007 · Matthew Weiner
Given names as a costume department for a decade — fiction’s trend ear.
- The Simpsons (baby-name jokes) TV · 1989– · Groening et al.
Satire of fashion and class in naming.
- Pride and Prejudice Novel · 1813 · Jane Austen
A small-pool world before SSA — the pre-trend baseline.
- The Social Network (not names, but ranking culture) Film · 2010 · David Fincher
A cousin portrait of leaderboard thinking — use lightly.
Sayings
It’s so 2014
Fashion talk
Apply only with a file-year in hand.
Everyone’s called that now
Playground census
A local trend, not a national one.
Wait for the ONS
UK-jurisdiction patience
The right attitude.
Number one in the world
Tabloid sin
The sentence this page exists to kill.
Enjoy the sport if you like. Quote it like a grown-up: office, year, place.