February 16, 2005
Fancy Data
Ohhh I'm getting lazy - or maybe its that I'm too busy.
Either way Wordlab should start paying me for the traffic I send to them. (Or I should pay them for the links I steal from them).
Today they had a post about baby names with a facinating link. Ever wonder how popular your name is? Ever wonder how popular it was say 50 years ago. Ever wonder when it was that 'Zoe' came back in fashion as a child's name. Ever wonder when Henrietta lost its charm?
Well now you can find out from a super slick data visualization tool.
Type in a few letters of a name and watch the data change.
You'll need Java enabled for this one, but its worth it.
andre
While John is in steady decline, Jon and Jonathan are increasing. Frank and Francis are also on the decline, BUT Francisco is on the rise. As for myself, "Derek" peaked at 2200/million in 1980, and is now down around 900/million. Happily, "Derrick" is less popular, having peaked at 1200 in 1980, and is now down to a measly 450/million -- and yet, despite its obvious superiority, most people who try to spell my name use "Derrick" instead of "Derek" :(
PS -- I always tell your blogCommentor to "remember my personal info", but it never does.
Posted by: derek at February 17, 2005 03:20 PM