Milestones in order. This is history, not a weekly activity grid.
- Parish counts
- SSA series begins
- Social Security Act era
- SSA popular website
- ONS modern releases
- A Matter of Taste
- KOSTAT name tables
- Scrapers and apps
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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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.
Civil registration was for inheritance and conscription. Demographers later realised they had a cultural instrument.
The web then turned last year’s table into a sport, which is how unsourced “number one” claims escaped the methodology notes.
Timeline
- Parish counts
Local English registers — the prehistory of ONS-style files.
- SSA series begins
Later published U.S. given-name frequencies start here — the atlas’s emblematic dataset (hero: Social Security).
- Social Security Act era
The administrative system behind the U.S. file expands.
- SSA popular website
The charts became a parental sport in the U.S.
- ONS modern releases
England and Wales baby-name publications became a media ritual (check each release’s year).
- A Matter of Taste
A theory that matches the shape of the files.
- KOSTAT name tables
Korea’s official frequencies entered comparative onomastics.
- Scrapers and apps
Live-looking dashboards without years — the failure mode this page exists to block.
Eras
- Administrative — Names as counts of persons — No fashion story yet.
- Demographic — Names as social data — Scholars notice the waves.
- Popular — Names as sport — Newspapers crown a dated #1.
- Platform — Names as feed — Years fall off the headline.
Shifts
- From local gossip to national file 20th c. — You could see a wave you were inside of.
- From paper tables to sortable web 1990s– — Parental anxiety gained a UI.
- From national to fake-global 2010s — Headlines implied a world ranking no office produces.
The files are a public good. The leaderboard voice is a bad habit.