46 replies to this topic

[garjones]

This link shows the most popular names in England and Wales from 1996-2010. It seems the popularity of olive oil in cooking has extended to names and the 2010 winners are Oliver and Olivia.

http://names.darkgreener.com/#

Stick in your name and see where you rate. Gareth is falling out of fashion and went from 117th to 854th.

Interestingly my daughter, Cerys, which seems fairly obscure (while it is England and Wales numbers bear in mind that England has 50m people v 3m in Wales so that shouldn't factor a great deal in pushing Welsh names to the top) she's 170th most popular name in 2010 while Ann is 1150th. Leslie is so unpopular it's fallen off the chart entirely for girls.

[Steve Sensible]

Stephen is trending down.

Which of course means it's getting cooler.

[garjones]

Oh yes and as you can see in the link, for people in the US you can use this one which does the same thing but with American trends:

http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#

[Mike]

Cerys is a fairly popular name in particular quarters; I scored bonus points yesterday with a teenager for pronouncing both it and a complicated surname correctly first go

Michael's still relatively popular (22nd to 53rd), but is far less so now than it was when I was born - in one primary school class I was in, I was one of 4 Michaels in a class of 22, which was ludicrous.

Heh, the sibling name thing on that American site is interesting.

[garjones]

The biblical names always seem to carry a certain popularity however secular we get.

It is reflected in my name, Jones just means 'son of John'. So we get a lot of Thomas and Jones and Williams and Davies in Wales because they converted from the Celtic style of your surname being your father's first name about 300 years ago and those names were popular. Similar to slaves being given that slave masters name it doesn't really reflect they are actually related at all.

If it happened today the Cardiff phone book would be full of Olivers it seems. Jamie would be happy.

Cerys is a fairly popular name in particular quarters; I scored bonus points yesterday with a teenager for pronouncing both it and a complicated surname correctly first go

Good work, I know it isn't that unusual, I think most people of our generation know of Cerys Matthews, but to be nearly 1000 places above such a common name as Ann is a surprise to me.

[njerry]

"Njerry" is not recognized in either chart. Guess that makes me ultra cool.

[Don Lerch]

Donald is unpopular in the US but more popular than it is in England and Wales but if i type in just Don, it is actually getting more popular due to its use in names like Donte and variations. hmmm

[Mike]

Heh, I've got an Uncle Donald, a great-uncle Donald, a great aunt Donaldina, and at least one cousin called Donald, plus a slew of family friends and acquaintances.

[garjones]

The question remains, where are your troosers?

Scottish names are not fully represented here since the UK data is England and Wales only so you can imaginatively put them up the scale where you fancy.

[Mike]

The General Records Office for Scotland published the data for changing trends in names 1900-2000 a few years back; it's not quite as readily searchable though. (The subsequent years are there too separately)

[craggy]

Craig is trending down, but Craig-Junior is trending up. "Craig Junior"? I'd rather call my kid The Hulk Junior before mocking him with Craig Junior. That's just sick.

[garjones]

"Njerry" is not recognized in either chart. Guess that makes me ultra cool.

Could that be because nJerry isn't a real name? Jerry is trending down quite badly on the US chart though, your heyday was in the 1930s.

[Nicholas Taggart]

The American site is particularly neat since it goes so far back.


On the England and Wales one Nicholas has gone from 52nd to 133rd.

On the American one it seems like Nicholas wasn't a very popular name until the 60s when it shot up and peaked around the time I was born when it was incredibly common. And since then the popularity of the name has been collapsing.

[craggy]

Heh, I've got an Uncle Donald, a great-uncle Donald, a great aunt Donaldina, and at least one cousin called Donald, plus a slew of family friends and acquaintances.

are all their surnames McLeod? I swear, in my life Donald McLeod is the most common name I've heard. Must have associations with 7 or 8 of them.

[Paul F]

Paul is down from 72nd to 213th.

Apparently there are a handful of people called "Paulius" each year, which is an odd variation.

[Adam Balson]

Well my name is the first one ever made so it was pretty old school when I got it.

[Mike]

My relatives are not MacLeods, no; but I went to school with a couple of Donald MacLeods.

[craggy]

see? they're everywhere!

[Martin Smith]

I'm trending down. Yay.

Down from 109^th to 267^th

I'm checking for random names now. Tegan is surprisingly popular. 328 girls in 2010. And a few boys.

Edited by Martin Smith, 26 April 2012 - 08:20 PM.

[Russell H]

I'm confused, because apparently Russell has also gone down to 854th. Either me and Gareth are equally unpopularly named, or there's a glitch somewhere.