baby names

So I just did this thing on facebook about my name's originality. As I already knew, "Jennifer" was #1 in 1982 (and most other years surrounding 1982).

When we were looking for names for the twins, we wanted more unique names than #1 without going overboard. We thought that it would be easier for a girl to grow up with a really unique name than a boy (don't ask why, it was just an idea we had for narrowing down name options). So, we wanted a boy name that was in the top 100 and a girl name that was less unique than #50. In 2008 (the data for 2009 in not out yet), Vivian was the 207th most popular name for girls and Gavin was the 30th most popular name for boys. After revisiting these numbers, I was interested in the rankings of a few of our friends' kids' names (those who were born in 2008 or 2009). Here you go (in birth order)...

In 2008

Sarah was #20

Lucy was # 112

Emily was #3

Eden was #232

Sydney was #49

Camden was not in the top 1000 names for girls

Porter was #481

Noah was #15

Carson was #89

Grace was #21

Carter was #65

Zachary was #47

Charlotte was #87

Cole (Madsen & Heizmann) was #84

Katelynn was #295

So, the winners for the most unique names in 2008 & 2009 were Gina Haile with Camden and Jennifer Linvill with Porter and the winners for the most popular names were Rebecca Dohrman with Noah and Jennifer Gibb-Hall with Emily.

I wonder how the next group of baby names will measure up...