How popular is the baby name Carlton in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Carlton.
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Linda and Carlton Garvin of Toledo, Ohio, welcomed a baby girl on June 8, 1987, during a thunderstorm.
Their daughter’s name? Stormee Lynn.
Stormee came home the day a slight earthquake was recorded in the area, Mrs. Garvin reports, and for the next five Monday nights, there were thunderstorms.
Source: “Names.” Toledo Blade 30 Jul. 1987: P-2.
What luck! I posted a question about Wisconsin state law and how it pertains to baby names several days ago. Today, I discovered a legal paper called “Naming Baby: The Constitutional Dimensions of Parental Naming Rights” by Carlton F. W. Larson of UC Davis School of Law. Apparently it was published the same day as the post.
Larson says that many U.S. states have laws about baby names, and that “[t]he most typical restrictions are prohibitions on obscenities, numerals, pictograms, diacritical marks or overly lengthy names.” He discusses each of these areas in detail, but since my original question had to do with numbers, I’ll stick to that.
Spelled-out numbers (like Seven) seem to be allowed everywhere, but the use of numerals (like 7) is restricted in some states, including New Jersey, Illinois and Texas:
The paper is fascinating. (And I can’t get over the timeliness!) I’ll have to comb through for all the state-specific details and organize them here, so that we can use the list as a reference.
Source: Naming Baby: The Constitutional Dimensions of Parental Naming Rights, via Larson on Baby Names, Free Speech, and Substantive Due Process
Kelly recently clued me in to something extremely cool: the SSA has released lists of all the baby names that were given to 5+ babies in the U.S. every year since 1880. You can download the lists directly from the SSA.
I was going to publish all of the 2009 names here in a single post, but WordPress couldn’t handle it. So instead I’ll start where the top 1,000 left off and give you all the names that were given to 100+ babies last year.
Let’s start with boy names. The 1,000th most popular boy name last year was Mustafa, given to 194 babies. After Mustafa comes…
Girl names coming soon!
Update: Here are the girl names.
Image: Adapted from Scattered stars in Sagittarius by ESA/Hubble under CC BY 4.0.
