Michael Williams points to the change in popularity of the name Hillary. See his post for a cool graphic, but here's the table from the Social Security Administration:
Year of birth Rank [lower = more popular] 2005 882 2004 809 2003 [>1000] 2002 [>1000] 2001 886 2000 878 1999 856 1998 868 1997 725 1996 693 1995 684 1994 566 1993 261 1992 131 1991 165
George has remained roughly stable from 2000 on; William spiked in 1998, of all years, and remained high (now #11, as opposed to $20 in 1992).
Eugene has been declining ever since this blog was founded in 2002. On the other hand, it has been declining since 1991, the first year that this table reports, and even more since the 1930s. In the 1930s, by the way, it was #25 (owing at least in part, I'm told, to the fame of Socialist Eugene V. Debs); in 2005, it was #539.
But, hey, I beat Hillary!
UPDATE: I originally erroneously reported this as Census data; it's Social Security Administration data.
I'm just saying.
Indeed. This is what happened to "Hilary":
1994+ [>1000]
1993 651
1992 233
1991 242
So, I would note two things. One, "Hilary" seems to have plummeted even worse than "Hillary". Two, in this brief series, there appears to be some correlation between what happened to "Hilary" and "Hillary".
So, I still blame Duff. Although Swank's first recorded appearance in IMDB is in 1990, so she is a close second in my mind.
--Abe Delnore
NameVoyager (requires Java).
Jim
But it turns out that this doesn't make much difference. I looked at the raw numbers on the SSA site and it's about the same. You can see the same, but only by decade, with the Baby Name Wizard.
But here's an interesting factoid: Hillary is now back where it was around 1974. If you extend the series back about 20 years, you find Hillary at about 300 babies/year in the early 1970s (242 in 1972, 250 in 1973, 312 in 1974), and rising spectacularly from about 1972 to highs of 1522 in 1990, 1789 in 1991, and 2523 in 1992. Now it's at 282 in 2005. (I could have gotten the percentages too, but I was too lazy.)
So why the huge rise over those earlier 20 years?
Who needs multi-causal explanations? They get confusing.
I have a son named William, and have noticed that the name has gained phenomenally in popularity since 1998--the year he was born. It's at #11 now? Wow! My faith is reaffirmed, after years of "Anything-with-a-J"-names.
Looking at the NameVoyager, the shape of the Hillary curve is strikingly similar to the curve for Jennifer. I think it's a fairly common shape, especially for girls' names - they come into fashion, hit their peak, and subside relatively rapidly. The cycle may be getting a bit faster in recent years, as more people seem to value uniqueness in names.
But The Baby Name Wizard suggests that in general, names rarely fall off the popularity charts because of famous personages.
I'd go with latter, as nothing new broke; as noted you just caught an error, same as the being quoted on the floor of the Senate post, which has also been corrected.
Just tryin to keep ya honest. It's harder to cricize the human errors, when you acknowledge that you're quite capable or erring so often in print yourself.