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Quick answers
What is the SSA baby-name file?
A U.S. compilation of given-name frequencies based on Social Security card applications, published from 1880 onward with a lag. It is a historical series, not a crystal ball.
Does ONS cover the whole UK?
The well-known baby-name release is for England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate publications. Say which office.
What does Statistics Korea publish?
Annual given-name frequency information that researchers use to watch Korean naming fashion, including shifts between Sino-Korean and native Korean names in dated years.
Why do names rise and fall together?
Lieberson’s A Matter of Taste: parents want distinction inside a style, so endings and neighbours move as clusters.
Can I say what last year’s #1 was?
Only if you cite the office and the year after that office has published. Do not invent a live #1 in this atlas’s voice.
Do celebrities cause the waves?
Sometimes they spike a name (see celebrity-influence). Lieberson argued they are over-credited relative to internal fashion.
Craft is citation hygiene and a sense of share, not only rank.
Never write “the world’s most popular baby name is…” in our voice.
Steps
- 1Pick one office
SSA, ONS (E&W), KOSTAT, or another national stats agency.
No mash-up crowns.
- 2Pick one year
The year the office published counts for.
Not “currently.”
- 3Note the category
Sex as published, geography, thresholds.
Read the footnote.
- 4Prefer shares to ranks when you can
How common is it, really?
Long-tail humility.
- 5Look at neighbours
Endings and lookalikes — Lieberson.
A lone name is rarely a lone fashion.
- 6Separate fashion from advice
A rising curve is not a recommendation.
See what-makes-a-good-name.
Checklist
- Office named — SSA / ONS / KOSTAT…
- Year named — Four digits.
- Geography named — E&W ≠ UK; U.S. ≠ world.
- No live #1 claim — Hard rule.
- Share if available — Better than rank-only.
- Cluster noted — Endings, not only the peak.
- Bias not inferred from rank — Emily/Lakisha is another dataset.
- Luck not inferred from rank — Ever.
Pitfalls
- World-cup headlines — No world office.
- Mixing boys’ and girls’ lists casually — Offices publish them apart for a reason.
- Comparing 1880 ranks to 2010 ranks as the same sport — The tail length changed.
- Using a baby-app “now trending” tile — Unsourced volatility.
Tools
- SSA Popular Baby Names — The hero dataset of this page — U.S., year-stamped.
- ONS baby names — England and Wales official releases.
- Statistics Korea name tables — Korean official frequencies.
- A Matter of Taste — The theory companion.
A clean trend sentence sounds like: “In the ONS England-and-Wales list for year Y, name N was among the most frequent registered girl names.”