My newest time-suck is the baby name voyager. Why are names called "baby names," as if in mainstream culture adults are renamed?
The previous entry had me searching for Sodapop, which I didn't expect to find and didn't, and Ponyboy, which I had higher but unrequited hopes for. Darryl peaked in the '60s, but Dallas has been on the rise as the Outsiders generation has begun to reproduce. Oh, poo, the television show also must have credit. It has to have been "Princess Bride" that made "Westley" spike in the '80s and '90s, just as Buffy has inspired Willow and Xander but, sadly, not Giles.
McKinley, Theodore, Howard, Woodrow, Wilson, Calvin, Warren, Harding, Hoover, Franklin, Delano, Dwight, Kennedy, and Lyndon peaked or at least delayed their declines while their namesakes were president, while Herbert and Richard dropped after those terms. James, Ronald, and George aren't doing well but Carter, Reagan, and Walker are surging. William is declining, despite McKinley and an upsurge around Taft, most sharply before 1990, but that defense of #42 is belied by the drop of Clinton from the '80s to now; and although Jefferson is doing better, the third president, not the 42nd, gets that credit.
My teenaged self's idea for a boy's name came from the same source as must be responsible for the surge in Dane after The Thorn Birds. Also Justine and Meghan. Ayla appears from nowhere after Clan of the Cave Bear, as did Tabitha and Darren, and less so, Samantha, after "Bewitched." Glinda spiked briefly after "Wizard of Oz" and Dorothy somewhat as the book's first readers grew up. Holden didn't appear until the 1990s. Are Asher's sudden appearance and Jonas's simultaneous but proportionally smaller upswing due to The Giver?
Quentin ranks higher than the unattractive Quinton but Fiver is nowhere to be found. If I were so insane as to have five children, I'd name the fifth Fiver. Or maybe Hrairoo. At least no one's named a girl Quentin: that's asking for trouble.
The ascendancies of Dustin, Angelina, Jude, Kobe, Clint, Denzel, Salma, Elvis, and Presley I attribute to celebrity namesakes. Maybe Piper and Tatum too. Hm: while Orpha has (rightfully, to my ear) disappeared, Oprah has not yet appeared.
I have been trying to find the lowest ranked of these top 1000 names. The closest I have found yet is Doloris, ranking 988 in the 1930s; but because it was slightly more popular in the 1920s it doesn't look like such a maverick (which word is, inexplicably to me, now given as a name). The tracking begins at 1900, and maybe in the 19th century this following name was more popular, but its disappearance after an initial ranking of 973 makes me think Mossie never had a chance.