Thursday, November 10, 2011

Baby Name Wizard

Sometimes I like to think about baby names for fun.  Because Dave and I do plan on eventually having another child, and that child will need to have a name. (And no, I'm not trying to hint at anything, so don't get excited all you over-analyzers.)

So I've discovered that my all-time favorite website for baby name fun is www.babynamewizard.com.  This site has got it ALL.  It's pretty awesome.

My favorite tool on the site is by far the Voyager.



One of my selection criteria for a baby name is that I don't want it to be too popular.  This tool lets me figure out exactly how popular a name has been, is currently, and even lets me somewhat guess its future popularity by the trend on the graph.  After you type in a name, it shows you the popularity of the name from the 1880s until very recently (the tool currently shows up through 2010).  The height of the graph at any time point shows you the number of people given that name per million babies at that time.  If you put your pointer anywhere on the graph, it shows you the actual rank of that name during that time period.

Pretty sweet, huh?

The website also offers a lot of other tools, including the NameFinder (which allows you to specify what you want your name to start with, end with, how many syllables you want it to have, etc.), the NamePedia (gives you a ton of background information on a name), and the NameMapper (allows you to see the popularity of your name in specific states of the US during certain time periods).

It's an awesome site.  You should check it out. :)

(And no, they did not offer me any money for this post.  I just really think it's a cool website and wanted to share!)

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