Baby names gain sudden popularity for various reasons. Maybe a celebrity with a unique name gains traction, or a character in a movie strikes a chord with audiences. Maybe an athlete reaches the peak of fame, and expecting parents have similar dreams.
I wondered how these trends changed over time. So using data from the Social Security Administration, I found the most trendy baby name every year since 1930. Here they are for female and male.
Trendiest Female Baby Names
To be honest, I’ve never heard of a lot of these names, but it’s interesting to see how parents draw from music, sports, and other entertainment. I’m also surprised that a good number of baby names are only small bumps percentage-wise in their induction year, but then go on a big run many years later.
You can see similar patterns in male baby names.
Trendiest Male Baby Names
Again, sports and music names jump out at me.
To narrow down these lists of trendy names, I used the same measurement as when I looked for the most trendy names of all time. Basically, you look for the greatest relative increase in percentage of all names. To avoid really rare names that would appear just because of single-digit totals, I limited the search to names with at least 1,000 babies given the name between 1930 and 2020.
See also: the most regional names, the most gender-switched names, and an interactive that guesses your name. This is a fun dataset to poke at.
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