Popular baby names in England (2007)

I've updated the Baby Name Map with the most popular baby names in England for 2007. Grace edged out Ruby for the top spot among the girls, while the top 5 boys remained Jack, Thomas, Oliver, Joshua, and Harry. However, when you combine all the various spellings of Mohammed, it moves into second spot behind Jack. This fact made a bit of a stir in the press. Like Wales, England also does not publish actual name counts, just rankings so I am not able to show popularity charts for English names unfortunately.

Popular baby names in Wales, UK (2007)

I've updated the Baby Name Map with the popular baby names in Wales for 2007. The top girls name, Ruby, is a personal favorite of mine, probably because this web site is written in the Ruby programming language. Ruby made a big move up the charts from sixth place last year, overtaking last year's top girls name, Megan. On the boy's side, the top five remain unchanged with Jack, Dylan, Thomas, Joshua, and Rhys. This year, the statistics included the top 30 names rather than just the two 20, however they are still not including actual counts, just name rank. So , unfortunately, the I'm not able to show the popularity charts for names in Wales.

Popular baby names in Scotland, UK (2007)

The popular baby names for Scotland have been released and Lewis has pushed Jack out of the top spot for boys. On the girl's side Sophie retained the top spot with Lucy moving up the charts.

Scotland produces an excellent set of statistics which includes every single name given during the year, even names given only once. This means interesting names such as Victory, Tubagus, Sno and Queeneffa can be found when searching the Baby Name Map.

Best visitor reaction so far...

I came across this reaction to the Baby Name Map in the forums at BabyZone:

This, my friends, is the bomb-diggity!

Thanks to Holly Rae for her great review which brought many new visitors to the map.

Popular baby names in Sweden (2007)

Sweden has released their 2007 popular baby names and Ella has taken over top spot on the girls side from Emma. On the boys's side, the top three remain unchanged at William, Elias, and Hugo. Sweden seems to lead Norway on naming trends so these names may start topping the charts in Norway soon. Sweden's statistics include all names given more than 10 times in the year so some uncommon names are included such as Milly, Eleonora, Ante, and Isidor.

Popular baby names in Norway (2007)

The Baby Name Map now has the latest popular baby names from Norway. Thea held on to the top spot for girls' names with other interesting names such as Vilde, Linnea, and Tuva also making the top 15. On the boys' side, Jonas remained the most popular name with Mathias and Magnus close behind. Norway releases good statistics that include all names given more than 4 times per year and at least 10 times once since 1997.

Popular baby names in the Czech Republic

I have added the top ten popular baby names in the Czech Republic between 2004 and 2006 to the Baby Name Map. The top boys' names include Petr, Pavel, and Jiří. On the girls side, the top names include Jana, Petra, and Lenka.

It is really interesting to see the different names that are popular in other countries. Particularly those countries that were not part of the British Empire.

I hope to continue finding new countries to add to the map. If you know of a source of popular baby stats for your area, please let me know.

New Feature: Compare Popular Names graph

After reading how this fellow graphed the popularity of his three daughters names, I decided to add a "Compare Names" feature to the Baby Name Map this morning. I already had the data from the US statistics as well as many other countries. I also already had a great graphing library incorporated into the map already. So, feel free to plot the popularity of the names on your short list by clicking the link in the bottom left of the map in the 'Stats and Charts' box. Enjoy!

Visitor Question: How-to view the rarest baby names

I received an excellent question from a visitor named Corinne. She asked how to view the most unpopular (rarest) baby names given each year in a state or country. One of the great features of the Baby Name Map is the dynamic and interactive tables that show popular baby name statistics for each region. By following the "View the rest of the boys'/girls' names..." links on the map, you can see all the statistics in a table as shown below.

The table is dynamic because it allows you to change the default sorting order (by rank from most popular to least) just by clicking on the column header as shown above. A small menu will appear that let's you change the order and even show or hide columns altogether. Please note this works better in places such as Alberta, Canada which publish every single name given in their stats. If you try this in a region which only publishes the top 10 names, then you're only going to see the 10th most popular name because truly rare names are not recorded.

I hope this helps others with their search for the perfect baby name. Please feel free to send in more questions about the Baby Name Map by clicking the Contact link in to the top right of all pages on the site. I'll try to answer as soon as I can.

Popular baby names in New Zealand (2007)

The Baby Name Map now has the latest popular baby names for New Zealand. In 2007, Ella pushed Charlotte from the top spot on the girls' side. On the boys side, Jack retained the top spot though James moved up the list. Unfortunately, New Zealand stopped publishing the actual count of baby names in 2004 so the current rank-only stats are not shown in the popularity graphs.

Popular baby names in Saskatchewan, Canada (2007)

Saskatchewan, Canada has released their popular baby name statistics for 2007 and the top two names remain unchanged. Ethan and Ava took top spots for boys and girls respectively. Continuing the popularity of 'Aidan'-type names, Aiden, Hayden, and Jayden all made the top-20 for boys.

Popular baby names in Alberta, Canada (2007)

After some recent feature updates, I've begun updating the Baby Name Map with popular baby name statistics for 2007. I've started with my home province of Alberta, Canada which publishes a complete list of every baby name given throughout the year. For 2007, Ethan retained top spot among boys though Jacob is moving up the list. On the girls side, Ava also maintained the top spot with Emma and Emily close behind. My wife and I will be drawing on these updated stats to help us narrow down our potential name lists in the next month or so.

Since Alberta publishes complete statistics, even rare names turn up in the data. A co-worker of mine had a cute baby girl in November that was named Elina. Searching on the map for that name shows that only two other girls in Alberta shared that name with her in 2007.

Mentioned on Mapperz - Mapping News Blog

Thanks to Mapperz for their article on the Baby Name Map highlighting the recent update and latest enhancements. Their suggestion to consider the Google Charts API for the charts showing name popularity is an interesting one. I've briefly looked at the Charts API before, but so far the Gruff library has worked well and tied in nicely with Ruby on Rails page caching strategies. I will have to take a deeper look at the Google API though in the future as it does look pretty good. My guess is that Google Charts also has a pretty decent caching strategy for their images. :)

New Navigation Features

I've just released the latest version of the Baby Name Map which adds a tree of countries and regions for quickly navigating around the map. Using the excellent ExtJS user-interface toolkit, the Baby Name Map now provides a truly interactive means of exploring popular baby name statistics.

On initial display, the map lists the top five statistics for each region, accessible by clicking the red marker. Clicking a country or region in the tree, will quickly zoom the map to that region and display the relevant statistics. After searching for a particular name, clicking a region in the tree will show the name's popularity there.

For users of the Firefox, Safari, and Opera browsers (sorry IE users...), you can quickly see more popular names in a region by clicking the '+' (plus-sign) icon in the top right of each region's map pop-up. Using the latest features of the Google Maps API, the Baby Name Map makes discovering the popular baby names in your area quick and easy.


Now that these great features have been released, I'll have time to update the Baby Name Map with statistics for 2007 which have been recently released. Look for updates soon and watch this blog for news on updated regions.