That pattern only accelerated in the 1990s, when the Social Security Administration began posting the most popular baby names on its website. (The practice was started by a government actuary named Michael Shackleford who, a bit resentful about growing up with such a common name, originally compiled the data so that he could make a more inspired choice as a parent himself, and then figured that others might find it useful too.)

American naming is now in a phase where distinctiveness is a virtue, which is a departure from the mid-century model of success: Today, you excel not by fitting in, but by standing out. “Parents are thinking about naming kids more like how companies think about naming products, which is a kind of competitive marketplace where you need to be able to get attention to succeed,” Wattenberg told me. And whether or not parents nowadays choose a name with an eye toward its Google-ability, search engines and social media have certainly changed the way they think about the value (or the downsides) of having a name that is different from that of other internet users.