[Publib] Re: Librarian knowledge - Names

[Bird, Daryl]

If you go to the Social Security Administration's baby names website
<http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/>  you can track the popularity of
names from year to year going back to 1880. One of my former professors
has noticed that name gender tends to migrate from male to female over
time. As he says, someday every Tom, Dick and Harry will be a girl.

 

________________________________

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Anne Felix
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 8:21 AM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] Re: Librarian knowledge

 

Regarding the Jennifer phenomenon (another word with an interesting
plural):

 

My favorite baby name book is The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg.
With all the various names, Wattenberg includes a little graph charting
popularity of names since 1900.  She also suggests names that are
somehow related.  For Gertrude, she suggests as "sisters" Bertha, Edna,
Florence, Mildred, and Hester.  The brother names are Herman, Lester,
Albert, Otto, and Horace.  She also discourages mothers-to-be from
naming their baby girls Gertrude.  

 

I think this book should be in every novelist's private library.  It
would be an enormous help in naming characters, and heaven knows that
public libraries can't keep baby name books for long.  

 

Anne Felix

Grand Prairie (Texas) Memorial Library

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