The Baby Name Wizard

It's request hour here at WBNW, with this post going out to the listeners...er, readers who asked for some "one-hit wonders." Those are the baby names that made the U.S. top-1000 name charts one year, never to be heard from again. Where did they come from, and where are they now?

I've run the calculations and I now have the definitive list of the names that appeared on the charts exactly once from the 1880s through the 1980s, and never since. Any guess how many? 860 names. It's a big number, but not really surprising given that we're spanning 110 years of baby naming style. The list reflects passing fashions, creative spellings, historical moments and waves of immigration. It's a fascinating collection of styles ranging from what-were-they-thinking to why-didn't-I-think-of-that. Today I'm going to describe the one-hit wonders as a group, and I'll highlight various discoveries over the coming weeks.

Before we delve into stats and methods, a few choice names:

- Euclid and Pliny

- Sable and Ermine

- Profit, Worthy and Wealthy

And now, the fine print. My first step was to classify the one-hit names into three broad categories:
1. Data entry artifacts (E.g. Infant, Christop, girls named Melvin)
2. Variant spellings of more common names with the same sound
3. Pure one-and-done names

There were plenty of judgment calls along the way. Were there really boys named Lottie? Is Darlyne pronounced the same as Darlene? The totals I arrived at: 47 artifacts, 157 variants, 656 straight one-hit-wonders.

Due to quirks in my data sample, the distribution of one-hit names skews heavily toward the earliest years in the range, the 1880s-90s. The biggest reason is that far more names made the top 1000 in those years than any others. How can more than 1000 names rank in the top 1000? The answer is ties. For instance, in 1980 the top 1000 girls list actually numbered 1002 names, with Lashunda, Mariel and Rae tying at #1000. (147 babies bore each name.) But that's 1980. 1880 America was a smaller country, and babies born then only made it into our data if they survived long enough to get 20th-century Social Security Numbers. The smaller data set means a smaller range in popularity and more ties at the bottom. So the 1880 girls list features a whopping 1102 girls' names, with a 158-way tie at four babies apiece. I considered skipping the 1880s for this reason, but frankly the names of that time were too much fun to ignore.

And now for a few more names:

- Welcome, Constant, Bliss (all boys)

- Sweetie, Lovie, Doll (any guesses which are boys?)

- Icey, Nicy, Spicy, Vicy (girls; Dicy appears in multiple years' lists)

To be continued....