Every year over Mother’s Day weekend, the Social Security Administration releases the top 1,000 names given to children in the United States the previous year. Some interesting notes about the 2007 list, released last night:
1. Top five girls names: Emily, Isabella, Ava, Emma, Madison. For boys: Jacob, Michael, Ethan, Joshua, Daniel. So, clearly the trend of girls names ending in -a, and Biblical boys names continues to grow. With the exception of Daniel, the top five for both boys and girls remained intact, and just shuffled in order. Daniel was 6th last year, while Matthew, now 9th, rounded out the top five.
2. The pool of names is expanding… quickly. This year, only one name (Jacob) was given to greater than 1% of babies born (a little under 1.1%). No other name, for boys or girls, was given to more than 1 in a hundred babies. By contrast, last year, four names (1 girls name and 3 boys names) were given to greater than 1% of children; in 2000, 13 names (10 boys, 3 girls) were given to greater than 1%; and in 1990, 29 names were given to more than 1 in a hundred babies born, 6 names were given to more than 2 in a hundred, and 1 name (Michael) was given to more than 3 of every hundred boys born that year. With this trajectory, it seems likely that next year will be the first year since they started tracking (1880) that no name will be above 1% in usage.
3. The only newcomer to the top 20 list for boys is Jayden (multiple spellings of the name will always keep it further down the list than it actually is). For the girls, Addison (#11) is the newcomer, knocking Brianna (#20 in ‘06, #22 last year) out of the top 20.
