Saturday, May 10, 2008

SPANISH INFANTAS TRIUMPHANT ONCE AGAIN: I'm not sure how many people are on the email distribution list to be informed on the day the Social Security Administration posts the prior year's baby name data, but you can be assured that I am one of them. And thus I am able to inform you that the 2007 name data was posted this week.

Not a lot of news coming out of the top ten for either girls' or boys' names -- the only name not appearing in last year's top ten is Elizabeth, up from #11, pushing out Samantha. Isabella has moved from #4 to #2, squeezing apart the Emily/Emma combo that has been on top for the last four years. Madison skidded a bit to #5 after seven consecutive years as #2 or #3. Boys' names are as boring as ever -- the big news there is that Ethan has supplanted Joshua as #3, and Matthew plummeted (in top ten boys' name terms, anyway) from #5 to #9. Yaaawn.

But there are two big name ascension stories for 2007, one on each side of the aisle: Addison and Jayden. Jayden is this year's #18 name, up from #49 in 2006 and #54 in 2005. Over 15,000 boys were named Jayden last year, versus 9550 the year before. As for Addison, Shonda's red-haired wonder hit #11 in 2007, from =#28 in 2006 and #106 in 2005 -- meaning that the 11,823 little Addisons last year represent nearly a quadrupling of the 3014 girls given the name in 2005. (This increase far outweighs the decline in Madisons over that two year period, incidentally.)

We also have a bunch of newcomer names to the top #1000 list. Most prominently, although unsurprisingly, Miley is this year's #278 name, up from nowheresville ever before.

I haven't fully parsed the list yet, and I'm sure there are no shortage of interesting tidbits to be unearthed. Feel free to share as you notice them.

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