I saw a link to the most popular baby names off a popular news site. I really liked the girls’ names but was puzzled at what I saw for the boys’ names. (List below is 2006, you’ll see why I’m not using 2007 below, but 2007 was very similar.)

Is the future going to belong to the Aidan’s, Braden’s, Kaden’s, and Jaden’s? What was worse was that John wasn’t in the top 100. I know it’s not as popular as it used to be, but I didn’t think it was this bad. I saw myself in 2050 being made fun of by the nursing home staff for having an old-fart name in addition to being an old-fart, the same way that Rutherford’s and Ethel’s must get it now.

I decided the list is off. I’m right. I actually trust the Government more on this one; I went to the Social Security site to see what they had to say about this for 2006, the latest year they had #’s:

That’s more like it. John is a respectable #20. BabyNames.com is way, way off. Caden/Kaden is #2 on the BabyName site, the names are separate on Social Security’s site but work out to #91 and #92. What went wrong?

From the BabyNames.com site:

Most Popular Names 2006

Here are the most popular names, by year, from the favorite name lists of the millions of BabyNames.com members. Most of these members are currently pregnant or just thinking about it. Because of this, our lists have actually predicted which names are going to be popular in the future. [Bold and italics are theirs, not mine!]

Even had my mom had Internet in 1977, she wouldn’t have needed some website to come up with John. I was named after her father. It’s only if you want something more exotic that you go online, which is why the audience isn’t representative.

This would just be just a cute reminder that you should be careful in selecting your sample when doing statistics like this, except… except that the BabyNames people claimed they predicted
popular names going forward. If you look at their “predictions” in 2005, it’s just as bad as the Caden/Kaden.

Watch your sample and if you make a claim about predicting stuff, at some point actually make sure that you were right! There’s a moral for me, too, about reading too quickly. I missed the comments about it being from their baby name lists and not Gov’t because I zeroed in on the “Most Popular Names 2006″ and then the ” Aidan’s, Braden’s, Kaden’s, and Jaden’s” without reading all the way through.