Baby Name Trends

Many parents want their children to have unique and special names -- we see it in the data (see below chart). For example in 1957, there was a total of 4.2M names registered under 10.3K unique names; in 2008, there was a total of 3.9M names registered under 32.5K unique names. The uptick in unique name count started around the 70s.

But these recent names are familiar because they are primarily just variations of the original name. Let's take a look at the name "Alison" -- this name reached its all-time high in 1986 but has since been dropping. On the other hand, variations like "Allie" or "Allyson" saw rapid growth from the 80s to the 00s. (In Gen Z's terms, "Alison" is too 'basic' now.)

Another analysis I wanted to see was the gender breakdown. We live in a world where gender neutrality is encouraged. However, the data shows that certain spellings are more popular with Males and others with Females. For example, "Reily" is adopted by 60% Males while "Reiley" (one extra 'e') is adopted by 65% Females. The most popular variation "Riley" is split almost half between 44.5% M: 55.5% F

Bias alert: Something I need to address is the Name Class. This was a feature that was manually created, but the problem was that there were too many overlaps between individual names. I also need to create a feature for country origin as this dataset included many foreign names. Not all names have a name class assigned as this is a work in progress.

Interact with the dashboard here