Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Draw your own conclusions

Taken from the Social Security Administration website, the following tracks the popularity of the name "Mary":

Decade - Rank - Percentage of baby girls named Mary
1880's - 1 - 5.6%
1890's - 1 - 5.6%
1900's - 1 - 5.2%
1910's - 1 - 5.6%
1920's - 1 - 5.7%
1930's - 1 - 5.2%
1940's - 1 - 4.3%
1950's - 1 - 3.2%
1960's - 2 - 1.9%
1970's - 15 - 0.8%
1980's - 35 - 0.5%
1990's - 39 - 0.4%
2000's - 58 - 0.2%

Draw your own conclusions. I'm not trying to start trouble here, I just thought it was interesting that over one in 20 girls were named Mary for decades and decades. Maybe centuries - the stats only go back to 1880, but I bet the trend was the same before then. And these are national statistics; among Catholics it was probably one in ten, or more! Imagine if all of the Jennifer's we grew up with (at least a dozen in our high school marching band) had been Mary's.

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