{"id":16319,"date":"2023-06-14T09:59:54","date_gmt":"2023-06-14T13:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=16319"},"modified":"2023-06-15T08:13:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T12:13:57","slug":"top-ten-eleven-first-names-in-one-specific-high-school-class-of-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2023\/06\/14\/top-ten-eleven-first-names-in-one-specific-high-school-class-of-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Ten (Eleven) First Names in One Specific High School Class of 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last time we talked about the middle names of one specific graduating high school class<\/a>. Today it’s first names.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, here were the top ten names in those years:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

(screenshot from https:\/\/www.ssa.gov\/OACT\/babynames\/index.html)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

(screen shot from https:\/\/www.ssa.gov\/OACT\/babynames\/index.html)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

Emily
\nEmma
\nMadison
\nOlivia
\nHannah
\nAbigail
\nIsabella
\nAshley
\nSamantha
\nElizabeth
\nAva<\/p>\n

Jacob
\nMichael
\nJoshua
\nMatthew
\nEthan
\nAndrew
\nDaniel
\nJoseph
\nChristopher
\nAnthony
\nWilliam<\/p>\n

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%.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

Emily 3
\nEmma 1
\nMadison 1
\nOlivia 1
\nHannah 3
\nAbigail 0
\nIsabella 1
\nAshley 1
\nSamantha 0
\nElizabeth 1
\nAva 1<\/p>\n

Jacob 1
\nMichael 0
\nJoshua 0
\nMatthew 3
\nEthan 1
\nAndrew 2
\nDaniel 0
\nJoseph 0
\nChristopher 4
\nAnthony 0
\nWilliam 2<\/p>\n

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%<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4fd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16319"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16330,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16319\/revisions\/16330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}