Name your kid interactively!

Posted in Family by Elliott Back on February 12th, 2005.

In a new twist on the naming game, someone has created this great java interface to the US census data for names. It shows in realtime area graphs of the prefix you type. For example, typing “Kel” will show the area graphs for “Kellie,” “Kelly,” “Kelis,” and etcetera. Since “Halcyon” isn’t one of the top 1000 names in the last 100 years, I had to settle for Kelly (!!), Elliott (me), and Alexis (hopefully my future kid’s name):

Frequency of “Kelly”

Frequency of “Elliott”

Frequency of “Alexis”

According to trend, Kelly’s name is getting more popular with age, although receeding a bit in the last decade. Alexis is HOT right now–but it seems volatile. And, sadly, Elliott is slowly recovering from overuse ever since TS Eliot stopped writing great poety…

A great feature of this is the stemming. Not sure which varient to name your child? This is like Google Suggest for the top 1000 names. It will give you some great hints. Liz too common? Try Lizeth!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 12th, 2005 at 5:19 am and is tagged with us census data, area graphs, kelly elliott, java interface, 1000 names, google, ts eliot, last decade, kelis, new twist, kel, alexis, 100 years, prefix, nbsp, game. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.