Thursday, November 12, 2015

Throwback Thursday: Generational Names

Recently, I've stunned friends and colleagues with my ability to guess middle names within one or two guesses - what they don't know is that I survive on statistics! So, to impress your friends and family, memorize these names and dates and start guessing!


I'm also very excited for this post, because it took learning to some early stage programming in order to create a program to calculate name popularity for a date range - while the SSA provides numbers by decade, I wanted a more specific calculation. Shoutout to my coworker Henry for taking the time to painstakingly teach me basic database programming!

The Greatest Generation, 1901-1924    

Mary
Helen
Dorothy
Margaret
Ruth
Mildred
Anna
Elizabeth
Frances
Virginia

John
William
James
Robert
Charles
George
Joseph
Edward
Frank
Thomas

The Silent Generation, 1925-1945

Mary
Barbara
Betty
Patricia
Dorothy
Shirley
Margaret
Helen
Carol
Nancy

Robert
James
John
William
Richard
Charles
Donald
Thomas
George
Joseph

The Baby Boomers, 1946-1964

Mary
Linda
Patricia
Susan
Barbara
Karen
Deborah
Nancy
Donna
Sandra

James
Robert
John
Michael
David
William
Richard
Thomas
Mark
Charles

The Baby Busters, 1965-1980

Jennifer
Lisa
Michelle
Kimberly
Melissa
Amy
Angela
Mary
Heather
Elizabeth

Michael
David
James
John
Robert
Christopher
Jason
William
Brian
Joseph

The MTV Generation, 1975-1985

Jennifer
Jessica
Amanda
Melissa
Sarah
Amy
Heather
Nicole
Stephanie
Michelle

Michael
Christopher
Jason
David
Matthew
James
John
Robert
Joshua
Daniel

The Millennials, 1985-1995

Jessica
Ashley
Amanda
Sarah
Brittany
Jennifer
Samantha
Stephanie
Elizabeth
Emily

Michael
Christopher
Matthew
Joshua
Daniel
David
Andrew
James
Joseph
John

Generation Z, 1996-2010

Emily
Madison
Hannah
Emma
Samantha
Ashley
Olivia
Alexis
Sarah
Abigail

Jacob
Michael
Matthew
Joshua
Christopher
Andrew
Daniel
Joseph
Nicholas
William

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if I understand this post. Is this a list of the most common 'middle' names for those date ranges? Or a list of the most common 'first' names for those date ranges?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Most common first names for date ranges. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any data about middle names. But guessing middle names (and twin names, in one case) by using this data is also fairly accurate.

    ReplyDelete