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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Males names: the "n" word

Over at Baby Name Wizard, there's a fascinating comparison of the last letter of male first names.

Laura shows that, over time, these have been changing so that a huge number of them end with "n": this doesn't show up in the 1906 or 1956 data, but is a gigantic effect by 2006 -- 35% of males born in 2006 have first names which end in "n", with the next letter, "r", at 9%.

I got curious (or I'm procrastinating; take your pick). The data are readily available at the social security administration site
http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi
and 2006 does indeed show the effect Laura indicates.

Interestingly, of the top 10 names only Ethan (#4) has the final n. But lower down we get to long strings in the rankings:
19 John
20 Logan
21 Christian
22 Jonathan
23 Nathan
24 Benjamin
25 (Samuel)
26 Dylan
27 Brandon
...
35 Jackson
36 (Jack)
37 Kevin
38 Gavin
39 Mason
40 (Isaiah)
41 Austin
42 Evan
43 (Luke)
44 Aidan
45 Justin
46 Jordan
47 (Robert)
48 (Isaac)
49 Jayden
50 Landon
...
222 Camden
223 Dillon
224 Braxton
225 Clayton
226 Keegan
227 Jalen
228 Ruben

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