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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.
Statistical agencies and Lieberson outrank any influencer with a ring light and a “this year” graphic.
Read these voices as maps of a time and place — not as a fortune for Name trends.
People
- Social Security Administration 1935– (files from 1880) · United States — The series
Hero dataset for English-language onomastic fashion.
- Office for National Statistics ongoing · England & Wales — Official counts
The honest source for that geography.
- Statistics Korea ongoing · Korea — KOSTAT names
The honest source for Korean given-name frequencies.
- Stanley Lieberson 1933–2018 · United States — Taste theory
How to think about the curves.
- Cleveland Kent Evans b. 1953 · United States — Public chart reading
Years on, myths off.
- Roland Fryer b. 1977 · United States — Subgroup trends
National files are not the only story.
A trend voice without a year is not a voice. It is a caption.