How popular is the baby name Angela 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 Angela.
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According to the SSA, the most popular baby names in the U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa — all four regions combined — in 2018 were Olivia and Sophia (tied) and Lucas and William (tied).
Here are the top girl names and top boy names for the four regions:
Ensley was the fastest riser on the girls’ list, moving 1,461 spots to number 965, from number 2,426 in 2016. Spring has sprung, and Wells (meaning “spring”) had the biggest bloom in popularity for the boys, moving over 500 spots in 2017 from number 1,419 to 915. Perhaps his parents are fans of the hit TV show “The Bachelorette” where one of the popular contestants was named Wells. Does this mean more bachelors named Wells at future rose ceremonies?
In a clear nod to the popularity of the First Lady of the United States, new parents chose the name Melania at an increasing rate in 2017.
It looks like new parents are “Keeping up with the Kardashians” as the name Dream rose 840 spots in 2017. Fan or not, many people know Rob Kardashian and Angela White, aka Blac Chyna, named their daughter Dream in late 2016. For the boys, another fast riser was Nova, who may have gotten his popularity from all those Villanova Wildcats basketball fans naming their sons in celebration of the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Champions.
According to the SSA, the most popular baby names in the permanently inhabited U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa — all four regions combined — in 2016 were were Olivia and Daniel.
Here are the top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names for the four regions, which which have a combined population of roughly 380,000 people.
In 2015, the top names were Ava and David. The year before they were Olivia and Daniel.
Three of the names in the girls’ combined top 10 were not in the U.S. top 100: Angela (214th), Amy (176th), and Athena (142nd).
One intriguing name on the boys’ list is Eason, which ranked 23rd-ish. (A 4-way tie between Alexander, Andy, Eason, and Logan spanned 21st to 24th place.) I wish I could tell which of the four territories is using it. In the U.S., Eason is rising quickly. In fact, it jumped into the top 1,000 for the first time last year (rank: 902nd).
Note: The SSA doesn’t include baby name data from the five permanently inhabited U.S. territories in its annual rankings (e.g., the top 1,000). But it does release two separate lists: one for Puerto Rico (the most populous territory at 3.5 million people), one for the four other territories combined. Click below to see the complete sets of rankings.
In 2008, psychologists Jesse Chandler, Tiffany M. Griffin, and Nicholas Sorensen published a study showing that people who shared an initial with a hurricane name were over-represented among hurricane relief donors. So, for instance, people with R-names donated significantly more than other people to Hurricane Rita relief efforts. (This is an offshoot of the name-letter effect.)
A few years later, marketing professor Adam Alter came up with an interesting idea: Why not use this knowledge to try to maximize donations to hurricane relief efforts? He explained:
In the United States, for example, more than 10% of all males have names that begin with the letter J-names like James and John (the two most common male names), Joseph and Jose, Jason, and Jeffrey. Instead of beginning just one hurricane name with the letter J each year (in 2013, that name will be Jerry), the World Meteorological Organization could introduce several J names each year. Similarly, more American female names begin with M than any other letter — most of them Marys, Marias, Margarets, Michelles, and Melissas — so the Organization could introduce several more M names to each list.
I think his idea is a good one overall. It wouldn’t cost much to implement, but could potentially benefit many hurricane victims.
I would go about choosing the names differently, though.
Repeating initials multiple times within a single hurricane season would be unwise, for instance. It would cause confusion, which would undermine the reason we started naming hurricanes in the first place (“for people easily to understand and remember” them, according to the WMO).
But optimizing the name lists using data on real-life usage? That would be smart.
The baby boomers were born from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, so here are the top initials for babies born in 1956 (60 years ago):
Here are two possible lists of hurricane names using the above letters. I stuck with the WMO’s conventions: 21 names total, alternating genders, and no retired names.
Mid-century style
Modern style
Janice
Danny
Rebecca
Martin
Cindy
Scott
Lori
Kenneth
Brenda
Patrick
Theresa
Gerald
Angela
Eugene
Wanda
Vincent
Nancy
Howard
Francine
Ira
Olga
Jasmine
Dominic
Rylee
Matthew
Charlotte
Sebastian
Lucy
Kingston
Bella
Preston
Trinity
Grayson
Ava
Eli
Willow
Victor
Nora
Hunter
Fiona
Isaac
Olivia
And here’s another point: we wouldn’t want to assign these names in order. While the official hurricane season lasts a full six months — June to November — most hurricane activity happens in August, September and October:
To really optimize, we’d want to reserve the top initials/names for the stronger mid-season hurricanes, which tend to do the most damage. So we could start the season using mid-list names, then jump to the top of the list when August comes around and go in order from that point forward (skipping over any mid-list names that had already been used).
What are your thoughts on assigning hurricane names with disaster relief in mind? Do you think it could work? What strategy/formula would you use to select relief-optimized hurricane names?
P.S. While J, D and R were the top initials 60 years ago, today’s top initials are A, J and M.
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