Are you a boy whose name terminate in “ n ” ? felicitation , you are contributing to one of the weird naming trends in American history .
The rise in popularity of boy ’ names that end in “ n ” has been unprecedented . In 2009 , baby name expertLaura Wattenberg tell the New York Timesthat “ n ” has grapple to accomplish terminal - letter - ascendancy in a matter of decades , “ [ postulate ] over in a way that no ending has taken over before , for boy . ”
Wattenberg ’s claim is support in dramatic fashion by the life above , originally make by data scientist David Taylor for his visualization blog prooffreader . By probing the U.S. Social Security Administration ’s assignment data , Taylor tells io9 , he was was able to tease this course out in the form of an animated histogram ( above ) , and some graphs , which appear below .
Crazy , right ? At the time of her 2009 NYT interview , Wattenberg called the ascent of the terminal - n “ historically bizarre . ” It ’s only gotten weird . Since 2011,four of the 10 most popular names for baby boyshave terminate in “ n. ” A full 36 % of boys ’ names now end in the alphabetic character .
An interesting object lesson highlight the “ n ” craze from a few dissimilar angles : In 2008 , when “ Jayden ” became the most popular name for newborn boys in New York City , many consider it a surprising frontrunner ; second through fifth places , after all , had gone to the generally timeless , biblical boys ’ name of Daniel , Michael , Matthew and David . Butto those in the know , the popularity of “ Jayden ” was less surprising . At the time , roughly one - in - three newborn American boy could be have a bun in the oven to result the hospital with a name ending in “ n. ” In New York City , specifically , the name had been on an upswing within minority populations for years , rate 10th , urban center - wide , in 2006 and second in 2007 . Moreover , “ Jayden ” reached peak popularity in a year when forty of the top 1,000 names for new-sprung American boys rhymed with “ Aiden . ” Names like Braden , Hayden , Kaden , Raiden , Zaiden and , yes , Jayden .
The world of an extensive “ Aiden ” rhyming folk ( and closely related origin , like the Payton - Clayton - Dayton - Layton - Trayton clan ) is engrossing in its own right . For one thing , it helps explain the ends - in - n phenomenon . When you consider that each of these name can be spelled any number of ways ( Jaden , Jadon , Jadyn , Jaeden , Jaiden , Jaidyn , Jaydan , Jaydin and Jaydon all being common variate of Jayden , for example ) , the meteorological rise of the nominally terminal “ n ” makes a caboodle more mother wit .
But then why does this rime sept be in the first place ? Where does it come from ? Personally , I like Wattenberg ’s hypothesis , which she puts onward ina late blog entry at Baby Name Wizard . In a nutshell , she indicate that what ’s exchange is n’t how we name , but how we spell . “ Replacing John with Aiden , Aidan , Ayden , Aidyn , Aden , Aydin and Ayden could make for a statistical fracturing of popularity without any large variety in spoken names , ” she explain . In other words : The names may appear different on the page , but they still sound indistinguishable to your ear .
In fact , Wattenberg finds that if you treat everything in the “ Aiden ” rhyme family ( “ from Aaden to Zayden ” ) as one mega - name , the group ’s popularity actually come near that of perennial favorite like “ Robert . ” “ Put it all together , ” Wattenberg write , “ and the determine feature of this key era is parent ’ desire to find that their kid ’s name is distinctive . ”
What ’s fascinating is that parents seem to measure a name ’s distinctiveness not by its sound , but by its spelling . The delightful sarcasm , of course , is that in seeking to branch out the way we import our children ’s names , we wind up converging on a amazingly homogenized strait . The more names change , the more they stay the same .
Many thanks to David Taylor for allowing us to apply his visualizations for this post . If you ’re into datavisualization , we highly recommend find out out his ( enormous metre - sucking of a ) blog , prooffreader .
datavisualization
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