Popular baby names in Alberta, Canada (2009)

I've begun updating the Baby Name Map with popular baby name statistics for 2009. I've started with my home province of Alberta, Canada which publishes a complete list of every baby name given throughout the year. For 2009, Ethan retained top spot among boys though Liam was a close second. On the girls side, Olivia was more popular than Emma and Ava.


Since my wife is due with our second child in May, we'll be gathering our favorite picks and trying to winnow the list down to a single boy's and girl's name.

State by state breakdown of top baby names in the United States (2008)

The US Social Security Administration office has just released the top baby names given in the USA during 2008, including state by state statistics. On the girls side, Emma was pushed out of number by Emily with Isabella popular as well. On the boys side, Jacob held onto the top spot. I've updated the Baby Name Map with the 2008 national and state data so you can search the most recent statistics for your favorite names and compare their popularity.

Popular baby names in Alberta, Canada (2008)

I've begun updating the Baby Name Map with popular baby name statistics for 2008. I've started with my home province of Alberta, Canada which publishes a complete list of every baby name given throughout the year. For 2008, Ethan retained top spot among boys though Jacob is a close second. On the girls side, Olivia took the top spot away from Ava.

My son, Gavin, shared his name with 118 other boys in the province last year, making his name the 35th most popular boy's name. That's just about right, not too popular, but not too obscure either.

Data API example: Namemasher

Last year, I provided a Data API for all the statistics behind the Baby Name Map. A number of other sites have made use of this data to mashup cool views of baby names. The latest is NameMasher which combines two names in interesting ways. Check it out:

Baby Name Brainstorm

Be sure to check out a great new baby name visualization tool created by Lachlan Cotter from New Zealand. This interactive view of name similarities displays 12,000 of the most common names I've gathered as part of my work on the Baby Name Map. Great job Lachlan!

Baby Name Map is now open-source!

I have released the all the source code for the Baby Name Map under the GNU GPL V3 license. The entire Rails 2.1 project including all the nifty ExtJS 2.1 UI features is available as a free download. I'll be updating this code archive as I make changes to the Baby Name Map.

If you're a web developer with an interest in name statistics and the Rails web framework please download and try out the code for yourself. I welcome any improvements you make to site. Please send any contributions to me via email in standard context diff format. If you have any questions about this open-source project, please feel free to contact me.

Developer API for Popular Baby Name Statistics

I have created a simple API that lets developers of web sites, mashups, and other applications access baby name statistics from around the world. Hopefully easy access to this data will make for some interesting views and insights.

It's a simple API right now. All the examples below will return XML output. If you would prefer JSON format, just switch to '.json' as the file extension instead of '.xml'.

• http://www.babynamemap.com/api/regions.xml: List all the regions with statistics. Region details include the unique ID, country, and most recent year of statistics.
  
• http://www.babynamemap.com/api/search/[GENDER]/[name].xml: Search the name database for a matching name where 'gender' can be MALE or FEMALE and the 'name' is an escaped name to search for. Returns the ID of the name if found.
• http://www.babynamemap.com/api/name/[ID].xml: Retrieve the name and gender for a name with the given unique ID.
• http://www.babynamemap.com/api/stats/[ID].xml?year=[YEAR]: List the popular name statistics for the given region (by ID) in the given year. Optionally, include an 'offset=#' to get the next set of results as only 100 stats are provided at a time.
• http://www.babynamemap.com/api/years/[ID].xml: Return the distinct list of years for which statistics are available in the given region (by ID).
• http://www.babynamemap.com/api/where/[ID].xml?year=[YEAR]: Return the list of regions which a given name (by ID) was popular during the given year.

This Data API is definitely in the early stages. Please send me suggestions on how to improve the API's usefulness and I'll try to make the changes as soon as possible. Enjoy!