My husband is a computer programmer and web developer. We were looking at lists of names from the SSA site, including those below the top 1000 and this morning he created this graph which I (humbly) think is pretty neat.
This shows how and when a name has made the gender switch, or if it goes back and forth. Very few female to male names, but as you can guess, quite a few male to female! He kept the list to 10,000 or more babies born with that name during its history and you can see from how tall each graph is how popular the name is/was overall. If you hover over an area of the graph, it should tell you specific details/percents (you may have to click first, then it lets you hover.) All the info was input from the SSA site, so I take no responsibility for errors. Plus, it’s just for fun.
I also really appreciate that he did not use pink and blue for the graph. Enjoy!
My husband keeps asking me to check “and see what the Berries are saying!” It’s very cute. I might ask him if he can make the timeline even longer (like 1920 or something). Or maybe that would squish everything together too much.
I thought [name]Carey[/name] and [name]Kerry[/name] was interesting in that they are “back” on the masculine side. I would love to see that, and [name]Cary[/name], come back for boys.
Very cool. [name]One[/name] question though…Unknown? Tell me there weren’t really 142 babies named ‘Unknown’ last year, 47% of which are female. What is this world coming to?
I noticed [name]Joan[/name] and a few other girl to boy names that can be explained by immigration. I’ve known Hispanic and [name]Haitian[/name] boys named [name]Joan[/name]. In Spanish and French it’s “jo-awn” not “jo-ann”
Again I grew up with a lot of French and Spanish speaking people, many second generation Americans. To them “jo-awn” translates to “jo-ann” in English. [name]One[/name] of my friends in school was a girl named [name]Joan[/name], “jo-awn” in French but “jo-ann” in English. Also knew a boy named Yoan and it was “yo-awn” not “yone”
That’s really fun and some of them really surprised me! And it’s cool that he’s enough into names to compile this–most guys are no fun when it comes to this sort of thing.
I mentioned this to my mom and we got in a disagreement over [name]Sidney[/name]. Apparently, in the 1700-1800s there were 3 female Sidneys in our family tree. I tried to explain to her that just because these women existed doesn’t mean that it wasn’t primarily used on men up to a certain point. I mean, I could name my son [name]Elizabeth[/name], but that wouldn’t automatically turn it into a unisex or boy’s name, even if his descendants used it for the next 4 generations.
Enjoy!
