Ego Name Surfing

One of my favorite online tools is the strange and lovely NameVoyager Baby Name Wizard, which has compiled the 1000 most popular baby names in the US of each year since 1880, and can show you a chart of these. Just type in your name and presto!

NameVoyager also has a fascinating blog, by name expert Laura Wattenberg, picking apart current trends and helping hapless parents to find a name that will be fashionable, but not Jayden.

The image above of my own name and its popularity over the past 130 years. As you can see, "Claire" reached a nadir of popularity right around the time I was born. Well, you can't call my parents trendchasers.

So, how popular is your name? Were you named at a peak of popularity? Are you, like me, watching in horror as your previously rather uncommon name gets plastered all over insipid characters on TV shows? (Six Feet Under, Heroes,  Aliens in America), not to mention movies? By the way, imdb now allows you to search for character names.