Compare names

What a comparison actually shows

Two names can sit at similar ranks today and have completely different stories behind them. One may have been climbing for fifteen years; the other may be halfway down from a peak its parents remember. Rank hides that. Plotting actual births per year does not, which is why this chart uses counts rather than positions.

The shapes to look for

• Crossing lines — one name replacing another, usually within the same style. Watch Jennifer and Jessica hand over in the early 1980s.
• A long gap then a second hill — a revival. Names like Hazel and Arthur show two peaks roughly a century apart.
• A sharp spike — almost always a single cultural moment rather than a gradual change in taste.
• Parallel decline — a whole sound going out of fashion at once, which is what happened to the mid-century -een and -elda endings.

Comparing across generations

Be careful reading heights across distant decades. American naming has fragmented enormously: a chart-topping name in 1950 took a far larger share of all babies than a chart-topping name does now, so a modern peak looks modest against a mid-century one even when the name is equally dominant in its own time. Our diversity index quantifies how much the pool has widened.

Picking between names

If you are choosing for a child, direction of travel matters more than current height. A name halfway up a climb will feel common by the time the child is at school; a name halfway down will feel dated. The summary table under the chart gives each name's peak year and whether it is currently rising or falling.