Last time we talked about the middle names of one specific graduating high school class. Today it’s first names.
My repeated contention over the years has been that even a Top Ten name is not all that common: parents may be remembering their own classroom experience with the name Jennifer, but Jennifer at its peak was used at well over four times the frequency of the current most common names. In addition, many of us have seen from our own experience that it can come down as much to local trends/whims/coincidences as national statistics: a classroom might have not a single child with any of the top five names, but two kids with the same name ranked down in the 500s.
Here was what I was interested to see: how did the Top Ten shake out in this particular graduating class? These are babies born in 2004-2005; according to The Social Security Administration, here were the top ten names in those years:
(screenshot from https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/index.html)
(screen shot from https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/index.html)
Most of those are repeats, which makes things easier. If we include all the names from both years, we get our own custom Top Eleven:
Emily
Emma
Madison
Olivia
Hannah
Abigail
Isabella
Ashley
Samantha
Elizabeth
Ava
Jacob
Michael
Joshua
Matthew
Ethan
Andrew
Daniel
Joseph
Christopher
Anthony
William
In 2004, the top eleven girl names were used for 9.15% of new babies assigned female at birth, and the top eleven boy names were used for 11.59% of new babies assigned male at birth. In 2005, the top eleven girl names were used for 8.80% of new babies assigned female at birth, and the top eleven boy names were used for 10.98% of new babies assigned male at birth. Statistically, we would expect to see approximately those percentages for our own combined Top Eleven for our two combined birth years: an average for 2004/2005 girls would be 8.98%; an average for 2004/2005 boys would be 11.29%.
I’m going to copy my two Top Eleven lists below, and add a tally of how many of each name were in this particular class of 190 students:
Emily 3
Emma 1
Madison 1
Olivia 1
Hannah 3
Abigail 0
Isabella 1
Ashley 1
Samantha 0
Elizabeth 1
Ava 1
Jacob 1
Michael 0
Joshua 0
Matthew 3
Ethan 1
Andrew 2
Daniel 0
Joseph 0
Christopher 4
Anthony 0
William 2
For girls, that’s 13 names in the Top Eleven. I have just realized that to make this strictly accurate, I would need to count how many of the graduates are girls and how many are boys; we are not going to do that, for several reasons. Instead I am going to estimate it’s 50/50, which gives us an estimate of 95 girls, and 13 Top Eleven names: 13.68%, compared to the expectation of 8.98%. For boys, there are also 13 names in the Top Eleven, which gives us the same estimated percentage: 13.68% of the names were Top Eleven names, compared to the expectation of more like 11.29%
So in my particular area, parents are somewhat more inclined than average to use Top Ten names—and especially for girls. And even so: imagine being hesitant to use the name Emma/Jacob/Olivia/Ethan in 2004/2005 because of popularity, but being able to peek into the future and see that your Emma/Jacob/Olivia/Ethan would be the only Emma/Jacob/Olivia/Ethan in their entire graduating class. Imagine avoiding Abigail/Joshua/Samantha/Michael because of the popularity, and then there’s not a single Abigail/Joshua/Samantha/Michael in the entire graduating class.
On to the interesting anomalies. Most of us have an anecdote or two about a classroom that had no Isabellas but two Isadoras, or no Avas but two Avelyns and and Eva and an Eve, or three Josephs going by Joey and two of them also had the same middle name. In this graduating class there were TWO Mavericks. Wouldn’t you feel a little intense about that, if your child were one of the Mavericks? In 2004 the name Maverick was #768 in the U.S., given to only 236 boys in the entire nation! The name Michael, for comparison, was given to 25,465 new baby boys that year! You would feel pretty safe assuming your baby would not have to be Maverick S. in school! And yet! In this particular graduating class, no Michaels and two Mavericks!
Similarly, though less dramatically, this graduating class had two Savannas and no Samanthas. The name Samantha was given to 13,786 new baby girls in 2004; the name Savanna, at #273 that year, to 1,198 (another 5,814 were named Savannah). In this graduating class: 0 Samanthas, 2 Savannas—and you can imagine how you would feel if you were parents who chose Savanna to avoid the popularity of Samantha.
This graduating class had two kids named Kira, which is a little remarkable: the name was #275 in 2004 and #241 in 2005. But to ramp up the remarkable: both of them have surnames starting with G.
The most popular name in the graduating class was Connor, given to six students. In 2004, the name Connor was #38 and was given to .4755% of new babies assigned male at birth; in 2005, it was #48 and .4381%, for an average over the two birth years of .4568%. In a graduating class of 95 boys, we would expect, statistically speaking, approximately 1/2 child named Connor. Instead, we have six. SIX! (Interestingly, not a single repeat of middle name or surname initial among the Connors.)
Thank you for compiling all this info! It is both reassuring (as a parent with one child with a Top 10 name, who has never met his name twin) and unsettling (as parent with another child with a name outside of the Top 1000 names, who keeps hearing “Oh, we know another ____!”). YOU JUST NEVER KNOW!
I am blown away there were two Mavericks in the graduating class. There was a collective (but well-masked) family gasp when a relative named her baby Maverick 5 years ago. It seemed so bold and out there, even for 2017. (It doesn’t seem that way to me now, though!). I can’t even imagine how shocking a baby Maverick must have seemed in 2004/2005!!! I bet you’re right and it does bother the Mavericks’ parents much more than the Christophers’ parents, say, to have repeat names in the same graduating class.
When you wrote “well-masked,” it totally threw me! I thought, were we really wearing masks for Covid five years ago?!
But, no, you meant masked in terms of concealment.
Wow, that was a destabilizing experience reading that!
You should just link to this post whenever you need to make this argument on the blog. It’s a perfect encapsulation.
At my son’s graduation, I noticed a surprising number of Noahs and Gabriels, but that may have been because the graduates were announced in random order so each Noah we thought might be our son and each Gabriel we thought might be his best friend, and we let the other names roll over us. But then again some other names I was listening for (Timothy, Niga, Ricki, Julius) didn’t seem as common.
They were announced in RANDOM ORDER?!?! Is this a thing? I would find that highly stressful because what if you missed it?!
The way it worked was they seated themselves and scanned a QR code that put their names the in order they were sitting for the person reading the names, but there was no predictable order to it, not alphabetical, not even by school. We couldn’t see him from where we were sitting so we didn’t know if he was getting close or not until he started texting Beth with about how many people were in front of him. It was stressful and it made it hard to time bathroom breaks. My mother-in-law almost did miss seeing him for that reason.
Yay, so fun! My Ava’s graduating class is expected to be around 1,500 (!!), so I can’t wait to see what treasures unfold!
This was so fun to read!!!!
I am one of those people who chose a non-top-ten name for my kiddo — it was #135 when we chose it. But then it soared up the charts. So far, though, we’ve had a handful of kids with her name in her (small) school, but she hasn’t yet had another kid with the same name in her grade.
Also amusing is that I still get “Oh! What a great/unusual/old-fashioned name!” from strangers about her name. When it is QUITE popular. I wonder how long it takes for the general public to become aware of a name as no longer retro?
The repeat names in my kids’ (very small) grades have been Jack, Donovan, Stella, and Audrey. One grade at our school has two girls named Quinn, and I feel like everywhere I turn I meet another little Sloane. I love this stuff.
This is so interesting! I find myself surprised at the popularity of Savanna/Savannah. I have a toddler Susannah and she is mistaken for Savannah at least 50% of the time.
Super interesting about Maverick. In my state (Iowa) it’s really gone up the list in the last couple of years, But I’m shocked there were 2 in a 2023 graduating class.
It’s in the SSA top 50… perhaps because of Top Gun?
My daughter’s sixth grade promoting class of roughly 75 kids, all born in 2010 or 2011, had multiples of Lily/Lili (3), Emily/Emelee (2), James (2), Logan (2), and Jacob (3). Which I only know because all sixth graders are required to be in a play together, and I still have the playbill, ha! Lily and Logan were the only names repeated in my daughter’s actual classroom (roughly 20 6th graders). And surprisingly, though my daughter was expectedly the only Livia, there were also no Olivias in her grade, though it was number 2 the year she was born. We’ve encountered Olivia everywhere else, including on kids younger and older than her in her multiage classrooms, on multiple girls at our not very large church, and at family gatherings of my husband’s extremely large extended family.
I was hesitant about naming my oldest kid Noah, because it was in the top ten for our state the year before he was born. And yet he’s only had another Noah in his class for part of one school year so far!
My favorite popular name anecdote: My sister (born in 1986) was one of SEVEN Sara / Sarahs in her English class in 10th grade. Not her graduating class, her literal one classroom class.
I had a history class with 6 or 7 Davids in high school.
This is fascinating. We gave one of my daughters (several years younger than the kids you are talking about here) a name that didn’t even make it into the top 1000 the year she was born. Yet she has another girl with the same name in her class in her very small private school, and another student with the same name in another grade in the school. Yet my son with a name in the top 20-something has never had a kid with the same name.
I love this! My son has his pre-school graduation coming up (although it’ll be more like 50 kids than 150!). I know a lot of them but I’m so curious to see the rest.
I know there are 2 Henrys (although I’m not sure if both graduate this year) and 2 Noahs, but not sure of any other duplicates so far. I’ll have to keep a copy of the programme!
My daughter Miranda has very rarely met anyone else with her name, and now that she’s at college there’s another girl with her first AND LAST name and there are mail/ parking ticket/ class registration mixups.
I *love* Miranda so so much! Our top choice for a girl is either Zoe Mir@nda or Mir@nda June “MJ”
Also just wanted to say I know your daughter’s struggle! I went to school from K-12th grade with a girl who had the same last and almost the same first name as me (think Alison Lastname and Alice Lastname). In our senior yearbook the school messed up and listed my name for my picture and her picture as well! 🤦🏼♀️
Here are some stats from a high school class of about 475 in the Midwest. No middle names were used which bummed me out!
Emily 3
Emma 4
Madison 6 (also 6 for all spellings of Madeline)
Olivia 2
Hannah 3
Abigail/Abigale 3
Isabella 1 (Isabelle 1, Isabell 1)
Ashley 0 (Ashton 1, not sure of gender)
Samantha 3
Elizabeth 3 (Lizbeth 1)
Ava 1
Jacob 3
Michael 2 (and they were both in my kid’s kindergarten class… the only 2 in the district)
Joshua 4
Matthew 3 (+1 listed in program as Matt)
Ethan 5
Andrew 3
Daniel 0
Joseph 2
Christopher 2 (+2 Christians)
Anthony 0 (1 Antonio)
William 2
Almost outperforming the top 10 boys: Caleb (5), Connor (5), Jaden/Jadon/Jayden (5), Kaden/Kaiden (5), Logan (5), Nicholas (5), Samuel (5)
Almost outperforming the top 10 girls: Allison/Allyson (4), McKenna (4), Sophia (6)
Ahead of their time: Trinity, Waylon, Jett
was just at a university graduation class of 2023 and heard most of these names at least once including my Ethan (though he’s a little older, graduate program).
I’m in Australia, and my oldest daughter graduated high school last year. I’m very tempted now to go back through her yearbook and give the stats, so you all can make a comparison with 2004/05 Australian kids….
This is super exciting!
I made some statistic for a random Hungarian high school (class of 2022 – publicly available) and compared with the 2004 top 10 name list. Here are the results:
– Number of students: 166
– Boys: 78 (46%)
– Girls: 88 (54%)
The top 10 names from 2022 were given to 10% of the boys and 13% of the girls.
Boys with top 10 names:
Bence – 4
Mate- 1
Balazs- 1
David – 0
Daniel – 2
Levente – 1
Tamas – 1
Adam – 1
Peter – 3
Gergo – 3
Girls with top 10 names:
Anna – 7
Viktoria – 2
Reka – 2
Vivien – 1
Zsofia – 1
Petra – 2
Dorina – 4
Fanni – 1
Boglarka – 3
Eszter- 0
I wanted to include the names from my town in this! We have a small graduating class of about 100 students so belong here are the people who have top names from the custom top 11.
Emily: 1
Emma: 2
Madison: 0
Olivia: 3
Hannah: 0
Abigail: 2
Isabella: 0
Ashley: 0
Samantha: 0
Elizabeth: 2
Ava: 5 (overwhelmingly popular given the size of the school!)
I was surprised to see 3 Averys in the class list! It ranked #77 in 2004 and #67 in 2005.
Jacob: 1
Michael: 1
Joshua: 1
Matthew: 1
Ethan: 1
Andrew: 3
Daniel: 2
Joseph: 0
Christopher: 0 (mind-blowing to me because I feel like half of my graduating class was Chris or Mike)
Anthony: 0
William: 1
The actual top boy name in this class was Connor/Conor with 4 boys with a version of the name. Interesting since it wasn’t even in the top 25 for 2004 or 2005! There were also 3 Ryans.