In another topic,

I don't know, but it reminded me of a cool Java application I ran into, one that lets you quickly see the historical popularity of given names, from United States Social Security data. I wish they did the world. It's at Baby Name Wizard.

I shows you with colored bands the bulk of each top-1000 given name over the last 130 years. If you type some letters, it shows just names that begin with that. Fascinating. Mouse over a band and it shows the associated name and rank.

It's easy to see trends like that of Danica, by looking at names that start with "DANIC" (until you get real specific, it is swamped by the likes of Daniel).

It broke into the top 1000, in the '80s:
'80s #813
'90s #911
2003 fell out of top 1000
2006, zoomed back to #352

It's fun to do things like look at names that begin with "O", and see how there were so many collectively in the 1890s, they bottomed out in the 1970s, and have resurged lately to 1910s levels.

Watch girl's name Madison go from nowhere to #3 over 20 years, thanks probably to the 1984 movie "Splash".

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It's interesting to note the bump from the baby boom in the 40's to 50's followed by the "bump" in the 80's and 90's.

It's kind of amusing to see the rise of Tiffany, Brandon and the like in the 80's. Ah well, no accounting for taste when there's a trend to be had.

Speaking of movie names, I noticed the sudden rise of "Trinity" from total obscurity in the 80's and 90's to the top 50 in girl's names after 2003. Can you say "Matrix?" I knew you could.

edit to add. Thankfully, "Neo" and "Morpheus" didn't make a similar appearances among boys names.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

I tried to talk a Chinese grad student out of using "Neo" a few years ago. His family name was Niu, so they were close. He wasn't completely sold on my suggestion of Gordon, though, which sounded a lot like his personal name. I do think that he didn't use Neo any more, though.