the name game

this site is sweet: popular baby names

its the social security administration's site which has all the stats on children's birth names since the 1880. there are a ton of ways to query the database and its a really high quality time waster.

of particular interest to myself are the pre-1900 names (once you get past #100 or so, we're talkin single digit numbers of babies born with that name) and tracking names of celebrities or cultural icons. for example, track ariel over time. its in the 200s or so until 'little mermaid' is released, when it shoots up the list.