Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Naming Characters

One of my characters in the current wip (work in progress) keeps insisting I've named him wrongly, so yesterday I went on a search to see if some other name clicked. The trouble is, it has to be a name right for the Regency era (1811-1820)

I found a baby name site that tells you how popular a name was in any decade. It doesn't go back as far as the regency, but is fun and fascinating, nevertheless. You enter a name and it produces a popularity by year graph.


For instance "Anne" hit a peak in 1905 and has been going steadily downhill since. Am I becoming more exclusive... or just more unfashionable?
http://babynamewizard.com/voyager

How did your name rank?

6 comments:

  1. My name peaked in the 1940s and it's almost off the chart now. It's funny how the fahions in names come and go. My mum was so shocked when I called my daughter Emma back in 1973. She could only think of Great Aunt Emma.
    I guess it would be like calling a baby Dorothy or Phyllis today.

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  2. Deborah was 5 popular in the 1950s (the decade I was born) but Keziah isn't on the chart. My great, great, gran was a Keziah.

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  3. Mine peaked in 1910 with 704 per million babies. It became a big fat zero by the 30's and that was it so, that must mean I'm one in a million!

    LOL

    sorry, couldn't resist that one :o)

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  4. I'm thinking we whose name has dropped in popularity are not so much unfashionable, but exclusive and rare. ;)

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  5. Well, as you can imagine, Eleni is not on that list. :D
    But my English equivalent, Helen, peaked second in the 1910's.

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