Why did I do this? Apparently my name, Christopher, peaked in 1980. Surprisingly, during that decade, it was given to 10,000 female babies as well. So, Christopher is a unisex name. Sort of. In fact, 95% are “unisex” if you define it as given to at least one baby of either sex.
However, most such names are overwhelming given one sex. Examples of “true” unisex names: Nike, Whiskey, Sea, Oakley…
(The spike is probably due to “names” like Notnamed and Unknown)
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Data from the SSA: [https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html)
Made using plotly.
Why did I do this? Apparently my name, Christopher, peaked in 1980. Surprisingly, during that decade, it was given to 10,000 female babies as well. So, Christopher is a unisex name. Sort of. In fact, 95% are “unisex” if you define it as given to at least one baby of either sex.
However, most such names are overwhelming given one sex. Examples of “true” unisex names: Nike, Whiskey, Sea, Oakley…
(The spike is probably due to “names” like Notnamed and Unknown)
I wrote more about Christopher here: [https://csferrie.medium.com/the-christopher-paradox-why-was-everyone-named-chris-in-the-1980s-fd959d9dfd27](https://csferrie.medium.com/the-christopher-paradox-why-was-everyone-named-chris-in-the-1980s-fd959d9dfd27)
Really fascinating, I’ve never seen this data approached like this before!
Someone talk me through this…where is the time axis?
“Hunter” seems to be a popular name but I don’t recall hearing of anyone named “Gatherer.”