The age of the unique baby name

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.)

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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.

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