Thirty ways of looking at a name.
Every chart is a different lens on the same story: how culture moves through the act of naming a child.
Open the full exhibit →New / Bold & Shareable · #14–31
Debut of the Year
The boy and girl names that made the biggest first-year entrance, year by year. A century of media, migration, invention, and mystery.
US · Debuts · Interactive almanac
The Graveyard
Every dot is a name once given to thousands of children — that no parent has chosen in over a decade. Hover to read the epitaph.
US · Extinct · Scatter
Comeback Heartbeats
Names that flatlined — then came roaring back. Each trace is an EKG: original surge, long quiet, second pulse. Phosphor-green on black.
US · Comebacks · EKG
The Living Map
Not what parents are choosing — what the name landscape actually looks like today. Each rectangle is sized by estimated living bearers, colored by median age. James looms. Liam is small.
US · Treemap · Living · Actuarial
Mary's Empire
The #1 name's market share, 1880–2024. Watch an 80-year empire shatter into a thousand fragments in the space of two decades.
US · Dominance · Strip
The Name Surge
The biggest single-decade explosions in naming history. Jennifer added 218,000 girls in the 1960s. Quantifying the contagion of name trends.
US · Surges · Bar chart
Name Velocity
Every name plotted by two speeds: rise to peak and fall to half. Four quadrants reveal the fundamental archetypes — Fads, Legends, Rockets, Flashes.
US · Scatter · Archetypes
Name Constellations
A force-directed star map where names that shared similar trajectories orbit each other. The Jennifer-Ashley cluster. The eternal John-William-James core.
US · Network · Force graph
The Fossil Record
140 years of naming history as geological strata. Each layer is a decade. Names embedded like fossils — sized by dominance, colored by era. What layer are you from?
US · Decades · Stratigraphy
The Heatwave
A thermal camera pointed at 140 years of naming. Hot colors = peak popularity. Watch the baby boom ignite. Watch the modern long-tail cool everything down.
US · Heatmap · Thermal
Tenure
Every name that has ever held a top-100 position, 1880–2025. A barcode of entrances, exits, and the few names that never left. Who held the longest continuous reign?
US · Top 100 · Timeline
Gender Crossings
Names that started as one sex, crossed the line, and never came back. Riley, Avery, Shirley, Leslie — the flow is almost always male → female. Charted by crossing year.
US · Unisex · Dual-line
Mary's Empire, Measured
The #1 name once claimed 1 in 14 American girls. Today's top name claims 1 in 100. The HHI concentration index shows exactly when the empire shattered.
US · HHI · Diversity
How Names End
The final letter is the sound that lingers. The -N wave overtook boys in the 1960s. The -A dominance of girls' names has held for a century. A heatmap of sonic fashion.
US · Alphabet · Heatmap
Suffix Waves
Name endings spread like infections. The -den/-aden cluster exploded after 1990. The -ella renaissance took hold in 2005. Each wave is a generation's unconscious trend.
US · Phonemes · Streamgraph
How Fast Names Peak
In 1920, a popular name might take 40 years to reach its peak. Today's viral names peak in 3–5 years. The naming fashion cycle has accelerated by a factor of 8.
US · Scatter · Fashion cycle
The Survival Curve
How long does a name live? The class of 1880 was still 80% intact after 50 years. The class of 2000 lost half its names in 15. Kaplan-Meier epidemiology applied to language.
US · Survival · Kaplan-Meier · Cohort
The Kehlani Effect
Celebrity names almost always spike and crash. Kehlani stuck. Births per year, charted against the three fates of a pop-culture name — the flash, the fad, and the rare permanent arrival.
US · Celebrity · Case study
The 2025 Gallery
Five views of the newest data in one place: the name universe scattered by peak year, lifespan bars, descent curves, before-and-after rankings, and the waves still building.
US · 2025 · Five views
The Wavefront
Names don't appear everywhere at once — they spread like ripples. Pick a name and watch it diffuse across America, state by state, year by year. An animated map of cultural contagion.
US · Geographic · Animation · DiasporaThe Graveyard
Every extinct name, each plotted by peak year and total count. Read the epitaphs of names that once filled classrooms and now survive only in archival ledgers.
US · Extinct · CohortHeartbeats
Names that flatlined, then came roaring back. A rhythm strip of comeback names across the decades.
US · Comeback · WaveThe Debuts
The loudest first-year names in every year since 1880 — the instant breakout rookies.
US · Debut · YearlyName Map
Not what parents choose — what the living American name map looks like today. Each rectangle is sized by estimated living bearers, colored by median age. James looms. Liam is small.
US · Treemap · Living · ActuarialThe Exhibit / Thirteen original views
Nobody Named in 2025
Names moving below the SSA reporting threshold in 2025, shown beside the arrivals rising quickly.
US · 1880–2025
The Pulse of a Nation
135 years of American births stacked by sex. Watch the baby boom swell and the echo boom ripple.
US totals · 1880–2015
The Gender Ratio Drift
For every 1,000 girls, how many boys? The line drifts with wars, medicine, and social change.
Ratio · Baseline 1,050
The Rise and Fall of Names
British names as a streamgraph. Watch cultural waves ripple through generations.
UK · 1996–2015
The Race for #1
Top British names jockey for position over two decades. Some reign; others flash and fade.
UK rankings · Bump chart
What Letter Does Your Name Start With?
A radial chart of first letters. Some dominate; others barely register.
UK · Radial
The Naming Diversity Index
Top-10 share has collapsed from 41% to 9%. Shannon entropy measures the quiet revolution.
US · Concentration
Rise & Fall
96 sparklines sorted by peak year. Read left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and watch generational waves roll.
US · Small multiples
The Alphabet Through Time
The J-wave crests in the 1960s. The A-wave builds in the 2000s. A heatmap of shifting letter preference.
US · Heatmap
The Half-Life of Fame
Names burned out faster over time. In the 1800s they lasted generations; today, under a decade.
US · Scatter
How Names End
-a surged for girls. -an and -en dominate for boys. Sonic formulas parents follow unconsciously.
US · Streamgraph
Names That Crossed the Line
Shirley, Leslie, Tracy, Taylor, Jordan. The flow is almost always male → female, never the reverse.
US · Dual-axis
The Decade Signature
Each era has a unique shape: name length, entropy, novelty, gender-neutral share. Watch conformity unravel.
US · Radar
Almost Famous
Names that peaked in the top 50 but never cracked the top 10. Mildred, Gladys, Beverly, Tiffany.
US · Phantom horizon