On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, Beth Benoit wrote:
> I know the list Stephen found is ten years old, but I was still surprised to
> see relatively old-fashioned names like "Mary" and "Barbara" on the list.
> (My own, "Mary Elizabeth"comprises two of the top five, and I have a sister
> named Barbara. Guess my parents weren't very original.) But I can't
> remember the last time I had a "Mary," except maybe Marybeth - usually
> condensed into one word. Where are the Jennifers and Kimberlies? I
> typically have three of the former and two of the latter in just about every
> class.
One reason our own classroom sample of names may differ from
those on the list (aside from cohort effects) is that university
students, and therefore the parents who name them, are a unique
subset of those sampled by the census. We don't get to see the
names of those who don't go to university. Thus our experience is
limited to the names provided by the more affluent and more
educated of society.
The census site has some interesting details on its methodology.
The list resulted from a project to study the undercount, and
they say that they deliberately over-sampled Blacks and
Hispanics. Thus they caution that certain names (Juan and Jose,
for example) may have higher rankings than their actual
representation in the entire US.
For those interested in this topic, Michael Kane sent me a great
url for another source of name information. It's
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/note139/note139.html
a compilation from Social Security card applications in the US.
Unlike the census data, it provides rankings for birth names by
year. Here are the top 20 for the first 8 months of 2000:
Most Popular Names for Births in 2000
Rank Male Female
Name Number Name Number
1 Michael 212 Hannah 161
2 Jacob 192 Emily 156
3 Matthew 185 Madison 119
4 Joseph 143 Elizabeth 115
5 Nicholas 142 Alexis 107
6 Christopher 142 Sarah 102
7 Andrew 138 Taylor 96
8 William 136 Lauren 93
9 Joshua 134 Jessica 92
10 Daniel 130 Ashley 89
11 Tyler 127 Samantha 87
12 Ryan 124 Brianna 82
13 Anthony 122 Kayla 76
14 Alexander 116 Olivia 74
15 Zachary 116 Abigail 72
16 David 110 Anna 71
17 James 109 Alyssa 70
18 John 108 Emma 68
19 Justin 107 Nicole 65
20 Christian 107 Jennifer 65
Despite my comments about university students providing a unique
subset of names, when I check the list of birth names for the
1970's (which is about as close as the statistics will allow for
correspondence with my current students), I see that Michael and
Jennifer top the list. Yup, that seems about right for my
classes. But if you look at Jennifer's position in this year's
list, as above, it's fading fast. Michael, on the other hand,
will be with us long after I've retired.
-Stephen
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Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennoxville, QC
J1M 1Z7
Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at:
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