What was the most popular length for baby names last year? 6 letters. About 30% of girls and 29% of boys received 6-letter names. If you expand that to include names with 5 and 7 letters, the proportions jump to 75% and 72%.
And in case you were interested in seeing the raw numbers:
| Length | Boys | Girls | Boys + Girls | % of Total |
| 2 letters | 2,699 | 299 | 2,928 | 0.08% |
| 3 letters | 34,387 | 55,857 | 90,244 | 2.39% |
| 4 letters | 264,265 | 172,044 | 436,309 | 11.56% |
| 5 letters | 547,089 | 381,518 | 928,607 | 24.61% |
| 6 letters | 579,233 | 523,707 | 1,102,940 | 29.23% |
| 7 letters | 335,496 | 398,848 | 734,344 | 19.46% |
| 8 letters | 107,818 | 191,990 | 299,808 | 7.94% |
| 9 letters | 64,006 | 80,176 | 144,182 | 3.82% |
| 10 letters | 5,327 | 9,620 | 14,947 | 0.40% |
| 11 letters | 18,127 | 585 | 18,712 | 0.50% |
| 12 letters | 276 | 136 | 412 | 0.01% |
| 13 letters | 95 | 166 | 261 | 0.01% |
| 14 letters | 30 | 53 | 83 | 0.00% |
| TOTAL: | 1,958,848 | 1,814,929 | 3,773,777* | 100.00% |
*The actual total is somewhere above 4,000,000. My sample is a bit smaller.
How long are the baby names you’ve been considering? Are they in that popular 5-7 letter range?
(Wondering about popular first letters?)
One Trackback
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nancy, Pam Satran. Pam Satran said: The six-letter name! Fascinating http://ow.ly/2qJTP [...]