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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.
Volatility is the subject. The meta-trend is faster dashboards and sloppier captions.
KOSTAT, ONS and SSA will keep being the grown-up sources.
Cycles
- Media crown → copy → avoid — A published peak can sow its own decline.
- Decade retro — 20-year and 70-year echoes appear in files.
- Cluster exhaustion — An ending tires and another rises — Lieberson.
- App “live” cycles — Noise on a weekly scale the registrars do not even measure.
- Cross-border leaks — A U.S. chart influences an English parent, and vice versa — still not a world rank.
Signals
- Official release calendars — The only opening bell.
- Methodology notes — Thresholds and sex categories.
- Top-10 share — Concentration vs long tail.
- Unsourced widgets — Negative signal.
Outlook
- More offices publishing — Better comparative work if we keep jurisdictions separate.
- More fake live ranks — Our citation rule gets more important.
- Stable theory — Lieberson still fits the curves better than celebrity myths alone.
The future of name trends is more data and the same obligation: date it or drop it.