Laura Johnston, Northeast Ohio Media Group, writes about given names selected for babies born during 2014 in Ohio and elsewhere in an article Top baby names in Ohio in 2014 appearing on the website Cleveland.com (It also appeared in the 15 May 2015 Plain Dealer, but you have to have a subscription for access). She wrote: “Liam and Emma are the top baby names in Ohio, for the second straight year.”
While the focus of Laura’s article is on the most popular names for Ohio newborns, she notes that the list of Ohio names is similar to the national list, compiled by the U.S. Social Security Administration of the most used 1,000 names each year. Go to: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/#ht=2. The Social Security Administration can tally the name rankings because today parents are strongly urged to fill out an application for a Social Security account and number while the birth certificate is being created. A brochure, Social Security Numbers for Children, is available for download.
Laura concluded her article with this suggestion:
Want to have some fun with your name? Time.com has a widget that tells you what you would have been named in every decade, back to the 1890s, based on your name’s ranking.
I tried out the Time.com widget at http://time.com/3856405/baby-name-popularity/#, entering my given name, gender, and birth year. It reported that my given name of Wallace ranked No. 138 when I was born in 1938, and the name with the same ranking in America last year was Colin.
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