135 years of baby naming data from the US Social Security Administration and the UK Office for National Statistics, brought to life.
Every point is a year. Every peak, a generation. Watch 135 years of American births breathe—from the gilded age through two world wars, the baby boom, and beyond.
For every 1,000 girls born, how many boys? The ratio has drifted subtly over 135 years. The biological baseline is ~1,050 boys per 1,000 girls—but culture, war, and medicine leave their mark.
British baby names from 1996–2015, visualized as a streamgraph. Watch cultural waves ripple through generations—names surge, peak, and give way to the next trend.
Top 10 British boy names · Hover for details
Top 10 British girl names · Hover for details
Track how the top British baby names jockeyed for position over two decades. Some reign for years; others flash and fade. Hover a line to follow its journey.
Boy name rankings 1996–2015
Girl name rankings 1996–2015
A radial chart of the first letters of all British baby names registered between 1996 and 2015. Some letters dominate; others barely register. The outer ring is boys, inner ring is girls.
In 1880 the top 10 boy names accounted for 41% of all births. By 2008, just 9%. As concentration plummeted, Shannon entropy—a measure of naming unpredictability—climbed steadily. A quiet revolution in self-expression.
Top 10 name share · How much of a generation shares the same names
Shannon entropy (bits) · Higher = more diverse & unpredictable naming
Names that blazed into popularity and faded away. Each sparkline shows a name’s complete arc from 1880–2008, sorted by peak year. Read left to right, top to bottom, and watch generational waves of American naming fashion roll through.
What letter does a generation’s names start with? This heatmap reveals shifting letter preferences across 128 years—watch the J-wave crest in the 1960s–70s and the A-wave build in the 2000s.
Each dot is a name. The x-axis is when it peaked; the y-axis is how many years it took to fall to half its peak popularity. In the 1800s, names lasted generations. Today they flame out in under a decade. Modern naming moves at cultural velocity.
Not starting letters—ending sounds. Names ending in -a have surged for girls (Emma, Olivia, Sophia). Names ending in -an and -en dominate for boys (Aidan, Jayden, Mason). These hidden “formulas” reveal how parents unconsciously follow sonic trends.
Some names migrated from one gender to the other. Shirley, Leslie, Tracy, Kelly, Taylor, Jordan—almost always the flow is male→female, almost never the reverse. Each chart shows blue (boy) and pink (girl) usage over time.
Each decade has a unique naming “fingerprint”—a radar chart of 8 dimensions: name length, concentration, entropy, novelty rate, gender-neutral share, dominant starting letter, girl names ending in -a, and boy names ending in -n. Watch the shape transform from rigid conformity to wild diversity.
Names that peaked in the top 50 but never cracked the top 10—the one-hit wonders of American naming. Mildred, Gladys, Beverly, Tiffany—each had its moment, then vanished. Hover to see their brief arc.