Utah setting trends for unique baby names for nearly a century
As part of the www.utahbabynamer.com project, David Healey broke down the category of most Utah name by looking at data showing names more popular over the years that were unique to Utah, as well as simultaneously how popular the name was in Utah.
Data on Utah Baby Namer is illustrated in this graphic depicting the name Evan and its popularity in the state beginning in the 1910s until the 1970s when the rest of the nation also began using it.
According to data David Healey has shared on www.utahbabynamer.com, the name Brittany was big in Utah for six or seven years before exploding nationally in 1985.
Chances are you know a Brent, Kent, Scott or Chad.
Evan?
Brittany?
What you might not know is that those names first became popular from within Utah, a long, long time ago.
While in recent years Utah has garnered attention for spelling names in more unique ways, Utah has actually been the trendsetter within the United States in naming kids for a century — at least that’s how far public Social Security Administration data goes.
For many names, popularity hits Utah typically five or so years before elsewhere in the country. In some cases, like Evan, names are popular only in Utah for decades before they gain national traction.
Salt Lake City resident David Healey, a former Timpview High student and BYU graduate, has been sorting through this data and sharing it as part of a passion project conducted in his evenings the last nine months and has shared it on his website http://utahbabynamer.com. He explained that as he played around with an algorithm that learns patterns in sequences of things, sifting through names was a good match.
“It’s perfect for a bot basically to learn how,” Healey said. “They’re weird names in Utah, but there’re still patterns to them. There’s a lot of substituting y’s and ee’s and ie’s. All the girls’ names end in lee and the boys’ names end in aden. It’s perfect for an AI algorithm to try and learn the patterns.”
Aside from Utah being a trendsetter, Healey also wondered how Utah ranked among other states for unique names.
“Everyone says Utah has really unique names, but I wasn’t sure if that was just something people say,” Healey said. “I was ranking the states on how many babies were given names that were at least 10 times more common in that state. Utah is No. 2 after Hawaii.”
So, what’s in a name?
Quite a bit, apparently.
For instance, did you know that LDS Church leader and former BYU president Dallin H. Oaks is singlehandedly responsible for the popularity and pervasiveness of the name Dallin?
According to Utah Baby Namer, Dallin is the “most Utah” boys’ name of all time; it’s 67 times more popular in Utah than anywhere else in the nation. Its peak popularity was in 1997.
“It’s so uncommon that you know exactly who everybody was named after,” Healey said. “With Dallin, you know. That [name’s popularity] did not exist before Dallin Oaks. I thought it might correspond to him being president of BYU, but actually the trend didn’t start until five or 10 years after he left BYU. In the ’90s it took off. Now the trend is to misspell it.”
While there was a correlation to boys’ names and LDS leaders, it was less prevalent than Healey would have originally thought. Ammon is the most common Book of Mormon name, Healey said, though it’s also a Bible name.
“I think the Mormon community is responsible, for the most part, for the uniqueness of Utah names, because a lot of these show up in Idaho and other places with lots of Mormons. … Utah really excels at girls since the ’90s. Those tend to not be particularly Mormon, but they are very unique. Ten years from now, these are the names that are going to be trending across the country.”
What’s also interesting is that through the data Healey was also able to identify that Western states were generally more creative in their naming — states like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Alaska. The state that has the name most unique to that state is Alaska; Hatcher is 200 times more popular in Alaska than anywhere else.
Utahns will enjoy the primary function of Utah Baby Namer, as it provides three creativity settings in a name generator for boys and girls. You could end up with a suggestion as uniquely Utah as Liylea Evonly Johnson or Stetlen Dallac Johnson.
The settings essentially gauge how much the algorithm gets creative when generating a new name, and how much it will try to reproduce names it’s already seen versus how much it will explore and try and come up with new combinations. According to Healey, the lowest setting will mostly give you names that are already Utah names, while the highest setting will give you results that aren’t Utah names — yet.
As for Healey and his family, his own children don’t particularly have “Utah” names; his sons are named Maxwell and Sullivan.
“Now that I have this Baby Namer, who knows, all bets are off,” Healey joked. “I’ll absolutely use it to come up with future ideas.”
Girls names
- Afton
- McKell
- Carma
- McCall
- Taylee
- Oaklee
- Oakley
- Larae
- Shaylee
- Mikelle
Boys names
- Dallin
- McKay
- Hyrum
- Bridger
- Ammon
- Rulon
- Stockton
- Brigham
- Glade
- Alma
Information according to http://utahbabynamer.com. Visit the website for a full list of the top 50 most Utah names for both genders.