http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html
It let’s you type in the first letters of a name and see in a flash the rise and fall of such names by decade. The visuals are amazing. (Try typing in “MAD” and you will see the sudden rise of Madison, Madeleine, etc.)
The person who does the web site, Laura Wattenberg, has a book on baby names called “The Baby Name Wizard.” I haven’t read it, but given the software, I’m guessing it is a better-than-average baby names book and every expecting couple has to own at least one of these.
(Thanks to my former student Sean Harper for pointing me to the website.)
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I really like your book and the approach your taking to analyse all this ‘hidden’ data. And I’m convinced you’re onto something.
But out of curiosity, how would you defend your methodology and conclusion (regarding baby names) against her criticism?
Mr. Levitt writes: “It let’s you type in the first letters of a name and see in a flash the rise and fall of such names by decade.”
To paraphrase your smug commentary in chapter 6 of your book: People who can’t be bothered to spell correctly aren’t likely to be the best authors either.
She actually didn’t have many concrete criticisms. She doesn’t like OrangeJello and LemonJello, which we are very upfront in our citations about.
Note that she doesn’t suggest that our argument about names moving down the social ladder has been well-established before us (although it is pretty obvious, so it would be surprising if it hadn’t been, although I haven’t ever seen empirical evidence).
She doesn’t like the way we conjectured about what the top ten names of 2015 would be, saying some were already in the top 100. Well, as we already know from the chapter, even being in the top 10 now is a weak predictor of being in the top 10 a decade from now.
And in the post about Black names, she disparages us, but again without much in the way of concrete points we could respond to.
Owen said:
Mr. Levitt writes: “It let’s you type in the first letters of a name and see in a flash the rise and fall of such names by decade.”
To paraphrase your smug commentary in chapter 6 of your book: People who can’t be bothered to spell correctly aren’t likely to be the best authors either.
Owen: why the hell do you think Levitt needs me? For the grammar, obviously. You’ve discovered our secret. But, seriously: get a life. SJD
What do you think David Figlio’s research? Using siblings as a method for holding all other factors constant seems pretty solid. I’m not sure how “teacher’s expectations” were measure though.
That is fun stuff. I tried several androgynous names to see if there was some type of trend. Did the names start out at similar popularities, and fight it out with one gender ultimately keeping the name?
I didn’t see this trend as I had expected.
For example, Brair was a male name up until the 70′s, at which point use as a female name came from nowhere and far exceeded the original popularity. Anyone know why?
In other cases (Pat, Robin, Shannon), popularity among both sexes peaked and fell in unison, with no clear “winner”.
Another interesting finding: In the common androgynous names that I tried, female usage exceeded that of male usage in decades that the name was seen as androgynous. Perhaps parents were reluctant to give their boys a name that could seem femanine, while to give a girl a name that could be perceived as male was not seen as a problem.
Any comments?
An article on androgynous names published in the March 2000 issue of American Journal of Sociology may provide some insight, Andrew.
I noticed there appears to be a trend for names beginning with vowels, as a group (although it generally doesn’t hold for individual names within the group). The U-shape is fairly pronounced for A, E, I, and O on the wizard Web site. Overall, the trend seems to be very different for names beginning with consonants. Perhaps vowel names are on the ascent because they are/were more unique or old-fashioned–two traits that seem to be in high demand among baby namers.
Let’s call this the Wheel of Fortune effect!
>She doesn’t like the way we conjectured about what the top ten names of 2015 would be, saying some were already in the top 100. Well, as we already know from the chapter, even being in the top 10 now is a weak predictor of being in the top 10 a decade from now. before us (although it is pretty obvious, so it would be surprising if it hadn’t been, although I haven’t ever seen empirical evidence).
That is a pretty weak argument. I also thought your list wasn’t very suprising. A name shouldn’t seem “unlikely” to be popular when it is already popular.
Her predictions are more aggressive. Otto – now that is an unlikely name to be popular.