Name charts are the most human data in the game. The series come from US Social Security Administration birth records, mirrored and published as annual data going back to the late nineteenth century. Each chart plots one name's share of all births of that sex in a year, so the question is not how many babies were called something, but how much of a generation it was.
That choice matters. A name can fall in absolute numbers while holding its share, or rise in a smaller birth cohort. The chart shows fashion, not population. It is one of the few places where the line is genuinely about culture rather than economics.
What kinds of charts appear
- Boom names: Linda, Jennifer, Ashley, Brandon — names whose share peaked dramatically and then fell.
- Steady names: solid, unremarkable shares with a long flat stretch before the cut-off.
- Near-extinct names: fashions that almost fully vanished, with an interesting final few years.
- Name-to-name successions: the moment a new favourite overtook an old one.
The records in the chart bank run through 2008, which shapes the questions. Cut-offs usually sit in the mid-1990s to early 2000s, so the hidden window is a decade or so of fashion history. If a name peaked before the cut-off, you are drawing a decline; if it was still climbing, you are drawing a peak and a fall.
How scoring behaves on name charts
Nearly every name chart is a rise, a peak and a slide — and the game filters out charts where simply continuing the visible trend or holding the last value would score well. That means most name charts hide either the peak or the start of the decline. The hard part is timing the turn, not guessing that a turn exists.
Beware the temptation to draw a dramatic spike or crash. Name shares are percentages of a large population, so they move more slowly than the stories around them suggest. A decline from 2% to 1% is a huge social change; a decline from 2% to 1.9% is a normal decade.
Drawing advice for baby names
- First decide where you are in the lifecycle: rising, peaking or falling. The last visible years tell you.
- A name that has already peaked usually keeps falling. Fashion does not often return a mainstream name to growth within a decade.
- A name that is still climbing often peaks within the hidden window and starts down — do not draw an unlimited rise.
- Shares are small. A full-chart swing of one percentage point can be enormous; look at the axis before deciding how dramatic to be.
- Expect a handful of genuinely surprising names: revival, retro-chic, or a sudden cultural event.
Why names are limited to one per day
Name charts are charming but structurally similar: a hump or a slide. A daily set that gave you three of them would be too easy to pattern-match and too narrow in subject. The scheduling rules allow at most one names chart per day and at most one search chart, which keeps the daily set varied without making it random.
When a names chart appears, it is usually one of the middle slots: readable enough to be a warm-up, but with a turn that catches over-confident players. The archive is the best place to binge them if you enjoy this category — a month of name charts makes the lifecycle patterns obvious.