Showing posts with label First Names. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Names. Show all posts

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Bad Baby Names I Have Found

I haven't had a chance to read Bad Baby Names: The Worst True Names Parents Saddled Their Kids With, and You Can Too! yet, but it looks like great fun. The authors of this book have combed the U.S. federal census records to find the absolute worst names parents have given their children. They found names like Fanny Pack, Fanny Whiffer, Post Office, Al Caholic, Anita Bath, and Amanda Hugginkiss.

I'd like to add my contribution to names in the census that I found to be rather interesting combinations. I hate to say these are bad names - the parents who picked these names must have liked them, but I wonder what the people who bore these names throughout their lives thought.

Weather seems to be a theme. I have found people named Frost Snow, Early Frost, Early Snow, Summer Snow, Summer Weathers, Stormy Winters & Sleet Rainey.

Perhaps these parents might have had grandiose plans for their children when they gave them the first name of King - I found children in the U.S. census called King John, King David, and King George.

These parents seem to be thinking about one thing when they gave their children names related to money: Dollar Quarter, Dollar Cash, Money Grant, Money Persons & Money None.

Some interesting names with a produce theme are Orange Field, Orange Woods, Orange Hill, Strawberry Field, & Lettuce House.

Perhaps these parents were thirsty when they named their children Pearley Waters, Dewey Waters, and Drink Perier.

And the person who would be great to have as a family member: Rich Cousin.

You can search the U.S. census online for free at Ancestry.com to find your own Bad Baby Names. See what you can find.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Most Popular Male Names

A while back, I did a post on the Most Popular Female Names in the 1990 US census. I thought it was time to give equal time to the boy names. Here is a list of the most popular male names on the 1990 US census. This is a very different list from the most popular baby names of today because the 1990 census lists includes all ages - from newborns to those who are over 100 - everyone who was on the 1990 census Most Popular Male First Names on 1990 US Census


  1. JAMES
  2. JOHN
  3. ROBERT
  4. MICHAEL
  5. WILLIAM
  6. DAVID
  7. RICHARD
  8. CHARLES
  9. JOSEPH
  10. THOMAS
  11. CHRISTOPHER
  12. DANIEL
  13. PAUL
  14. MARK
  15. DONALD
  16. GEORGE
  17. KENNETH
  18. STEVEN
  19. EDWARD
  20. BRIAN
Compare these names to the top 20 male names today, and you can see how a persons first name may help place his birthdate.  Scroll down on that page and you can see the popular names by region and decade which may give birth clues to some names in your family tree.

You can go to the US 1990 census database at httpp://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/1990surnames/dist.male.first to search for the popularity of your own name.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

First Names, Redux

How Popular is your First Name? reported on first names based on the 1990 US census.

The Social Security web site also has a database of US first name popularity.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

At first glance, the website seems a place for new mothers to find baby names because at the top of the page is the most popular baby names list for 2005. But look a little lower on the page, and you can get a list of up to 1000 of the most popular names for any particular year of birth starting with 1880. You can also follow the popularity of a birth name over the years. I entered 127 years - the maximum - into the box labeled Years.

Look up your own first name on the US Social Security site. Where you born in the time frame when your first name was the most popular?

How can this be used in our genealogy? Could we use name popularity as a clue to a starting place when searching for a time period of someone's birth? A first place to look based on probability?

A female named Mildred was most likely born around 1910 when the name Mildred was in the top 10 list. In 1927 the name Mildred gradually starting losing its popularity. In 1910, 1 in 8 newborn baby girls was given the name Mildred. Today, 1 in 972.

A female named Madison was probably born after 1985. In 1984 Madison as a female first name wasn't even on the radar. It all started with the lovely mermaid in the movie Splash who took her name from a street sign in NYC. Today Madison is in the top 10 most popular list.

Location distribution is also important, but the Social Security site only has data for 1960 and later. Still, I find my own name very popular in North Eastern states (where I was born), but not anywhere on the lists in the South or Western States. Could name popularity by location also give us some clues to look for areas of birth?

If nothing else, it is fun to look up family names in the database. Yet I can't help but think that we may not see clusters of popular names in the future with the advent of the Internet. Wanting a name that is unique and original, some new mothers today look at the baby name databases online to make sure they pick a name that is NOT on the most popular list.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

How Popular is Your First Name?

What are the most popular female names found on the 1990 US census? This is a very different list from the most popular baby names of today because the 1990 census lists includes all ages - from newborns to those who are over 100 - everyone who was on the 1990 census

http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/namesearch.html

Most Popular Female First Names on 1990 US Census

  1. MARY
  2. PATRICIA
  3. LINDA
  4. BARBARA
  5. ELIZABETH
  6. JENNIFER
  7. MARIA
  8. SUSAN
  9. MARGARET
  10. DOROTHY
  11. LISA
  12. NANCY
  13. KAREN
  14. BETTY
  15. HELEN
  16. SANDRA
  17. DONNA
  18. CAROL
  19. RUTH
  20. SHARON

Wait a minute? Where is Emily, Emma, Ashley and Madison, the popular baby names of today? As it turns out, Emily ranks 99 overall, Emma is 134, Ashley is 725, and Madison is a lowly 2,029.

Are there really more females in the US named Dorothy than Emily? There sure were when the 1990 census was taken. I suspect it has to do with demographics. With the exception of Jennifer, all the names on the list are the popular names given to Baby Boomer babies, those born between 1946 and 1964, when the birth rate was very high.

You can go to the US 1990 census database at http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/namesearch.html
to search for the popularity of your own name.

You will get a result that looks like this (my first name):
KATHLEEN 0.424 24.468 36

This means that KATHLEEN ranks 36th in terms of frequency of all US female first names (1990).

The first name, KATHLEEN, is possessed by 0.424 percent of the 1990 US census population sample.

24.468 percent of the sample population is covered by KATHLEEN and the 35 names occurring more frequently than KATHLEEN. Another way of saying this is that almost 25% of the US females have the same 36 first names!

Surname Distributions