My wife Katie is named after her great aunt Kate. Or at least that was the justification her parents came up with after watching a MacDonald’s commercial and deciding they liked the name.
Yesterday I attended a great workshop by Dr. Bill Turkel on the growing digital toolbox for historians and I learned about WolframAlpha, a computational knowledge engine, which has a growing curated database of useful information. Give it a try and search “China population” or “caffeine”.
Along with this interesting demographic and chemical information, WolframAlpha has data from the US census on first names. Bill demonstrated a few names and I started punching Jim and Katie into the search bar. Turns out Jim has been on a long-term decline for the better part of a century. The graph below show Jim was a lot more popular in the 1890s, when my great-grandfather Jim Clifford was born, somewhat popular when my uncle Jim Clifford was born in the early 1960s, and not very popular at all when I was born in 1980. However, it made the first Jim Clifford’s widow, Florance Clifford, happy to have another child named after the husband she lost in the height of the depression fifty years earlier (I’ve got a cousin named Florence Clifford, born in the 1990s, who according to WolframAlpha, makes her almost one of a kind).
US Childern named Jim
The trend for my official name, James, is not much better:
US Children named James
Now I can’t do a post about names on this website without stroking the ego one of the editors-in-chef, so here is the chart for the name John (it does look like Johnism‘s potential is in decline):
US Children named John
Now back to the MacDonald’s commercial and the name Katie. When I typed my wife’s name into the search bar yesterday I was really surprised to see the huge spike starting in 1980. Turns out the commercial was first aired on July 31 1980. Either the marketing team on Madison Ave were really in tune with the beginning of a trend or they made this trend.
US Children named Katie
Head to http://www.wolframalpha.com/ and test out your own name.
Wow! I have rarely ever been part of a trend and never in at the beginning. We’ve never made a secret that the name Katie came from that commercial. It was convenient that my aunt who was a memorable character was also named Kate, just in case we ever decided that we were embarrassed by the connection to McDonald’s. I hasten to add that the name is just about the only thing we’ve gotten from McDonald’s Judy
Great post, Jim.
The fact that you explored Johnism as part of your article made my heart smile. You’ve also revealed this ideology/solution as the semi-exclusive organizational structure that it is. At least with the name “John” – but, as you know, the power of Johism is realized by the Juans, Johanna, Jeans, Giovannis, and Yahyas of the world.
It seems as though your Amero-centric graphs did capture this amazing trend, though.
Regardless, this is an amazing story that expertly chronicles the fall of Jims and Johns, while celebrating the rise of – shudder – Codys…
Well done, good sir.