The quest has begun for a name for our new son. This is hard.

As with Brenden, we each have certain criteria to meet. For Jenny, Newbie’s first name can’t be extremely popular, can’t be the same as one of her exes’ names, and can’t remind her of any annoying people from her past. For me, his first name must have at least two syllables, can’t be “trendy”, can’t lend itself to easy shortening, and must be the name we actually call him. There are others, but you get the idea. It also has to sorta work with Brenden’s name since they’ll be said together often.

One interesting site we found is the Social Security Administration’s list of baby names for each year. You can break it down by state, year, or decade. I found that parents are much more creative today than they were in the late 70s when we were born. In 1976, for example, the most popular name was Jennifer with 3.78% of all female babies. In other words, on average every coed classroom of 25 kids had a roughly 50/50 chance of having a Jennifer. The top 10 girl names accounted for 16% of all female births. The top boy name was Michael, even more dominant at 4.1% of all male babies. The top 10 boy names accounted for an astounding 24% of all male births.

In 2008, new parents are much less likely to see another baby in the nursery with the same name as their own. The top girl name, Emma, only accounted for 0.9% of all female births. The top ten girl names only accounted for 7.7% of all little girls, compared to 16% in 1976. The top boy name, Jacob, was given to 1%. The top ten boy names accounted for 9.7% of all little boys, compared to 24% in 1976. I imagine part of this change comes from the increase in immigration. People from other countries who have babies here don’t necessarily gravitate toward the same names that 5th generation Americans prefer. Other reasons probably exist as well – a desire for their children to have a less common name, perhaps? Do you have any ideas?

Regardless of the causes, our children are less likely to have classmates who share the same name than we were. I remember having a Matt P. and a Matt W. in some of my classes. Jenny had three other classmates/friends who shared her name. My high school tennis team had two Andys. Even if we choose one of the more popular names for Newbie, he’ll still have a good chance of being the only one in his class.

Right now, my current favorite is Mel.