Names through history

I found this a while back but forgot about it until Deb's recent name post. This is a little online Java program that shows you how popular different names have been in the US since the 1880s. Just start typing a name and it will make a graph for you based on how common that name was.

For instance, type in "Kaylee" and it'll show you that this name didn't exist before the 1970s, but is now the 41th most popular name for American girls. For boys, "Edgar" was pretty popular in the late-19th century, but began declining and reached a low point in the 1960s. But it's rising in popularity again, and is now about as common as it was in the 1930s.

Although the program is called the Baby Name Wizard, I found it through a writing blog. It would be a great tool for someone writing a period piece novel -- it would tell you not to call your Victorian heroine "Tiffany", or that you shouldn't have a contemporary American adult named "Maddox" because this name was basically unheard of until Angelina Jolie used it for her son in 2002.