See Every Name As Popular As Yours, 1880 to Now

I like to call Mother’s Day the “Super Bowl of Interactive Dataviz,” since this is typically when the Social Security Administration releases its annual update to the U.S. baby names data. If there’s a dataset that delights the general reader more, God kept it for himself.

This is a reprise of an old project that I’ve always wanted to try a bit differently, putting aside the aggregation of years into decades and just listing every year back to 1880. I’ve recently come across a few really mesmerizing examples of text-heavy design, like this patent portfolio, and wanted to see what 144 names looked like.

Normally I’d stash this for future use and better refinement. I’m tossing it up now in hopes that there’s at least one fiction writer out there struggling with character names in their historical novel (set in America). My advice? Think of people you know who remind you of your characters, plug in their names and birth years, and look back to the birth year of their fictional counterparts. This will get you from “Ella” to “Winifred,” from “Henry” to “Morris,” and from “Hunter” to “Elmer.” I’d read that book.