The popularity of baby name “Donald” is falling dramatically

The popularity of baby name “Donald” is falling dramatically

Salon makes that sound like a Trump thing.

Two points:

1. That was happening long before THE Donald came along. Donald was once the 6th most popular baby name in America, and has fallen steadily since 1934.

2. You could probably make the same claim about most traditional names, even the most common ones like John, Michael and Joseph. I'll cite one example dear to my heart. My own name, Gregory, was once among the top 25, like Donald, but the bottom fell out of the market. In this millennium, it has fallen from 138th place to 361st, while Donald has fallen from 217th to 488th. Those two names are simply falling out of favor, and are losing popularity at comparable rates. It's not a Trump thing, but simply the progress of civilization. When it comes to naming our children, popular tastes change in general, and the country's shifts in ethnic composition accelerate that change. If you could journey back farther in time, you would see that names like Ida, Nellie and Cora used to be among America's top 20. Now they barely exist. The case of Ida is a dramatic illustration. In 1880 it was the 7th most popular girls' name in America. By 1987 it had dropped out of the top 1000. That name, and others which were once popular, now sound old-fashioned, as Gregory and Donald probably will to our posterity.

I qualified that with "probably" because names sometimes make a comeback. Noah was a fairly popular name in the late 19th century, but kept sinking from then until the 1960s, when it stood in approximately 700th place. Then it miraculously revived and is now ... are you ready for this? ... the number one name in America for baby boys.

The female equivalent of that is Emma. In 1900 it was in 13th place. By 1976 it had dropped to number 461, but the trend reversed so dramatically that it had gotten right back to #13 by 2001, almost exactly a century after it had first occupied that spot. Its popularity has not yet begun to wane. To the contrary, it is now America's #1 name for baby girls!

By the way, if you want to study these numbers, or just want to check out your own name, SSA.gov has a nifty little database built for you, and it allows you to query it for many different kinds of reports. Do you want to know the top names in 1880, or any year since? Do you want to see how the popularity of your name has changed from 1900 until now; or from 2000 until now? Those questions can be answered in a minute or less.