AltaVista, uh, Dogpile, uh, Ask Jeeves, uh...

I was reading on Yahoo about baby names and what they say about a culture – whatever to that. However, something that jumped out at me as interesting is the lists of states that have the most unique baby’s names (quantified as the lowest percentage of babies born with names in the top 10 for that year).

Read for yourself, if you like:

[http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110223/sc_livescience/ babiesinfrontierstateshavemoreunusualnames] – who knows if this link will work in 5 minutes…[Not really a link, you'll have to take out the space after livescience/]

Let’s take a look at what the top names were for 2009, from
[from www.behindthename.com]

Boys: #1 Jacob, Ethan, Michael, Alexander, William, Joshua, Daniel, Jayden, Noah, #10 Anthony

Girls: #1 Isabella, Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Ava, Emily, Madison, Abigail, Chloe, #10 Mia

A quick “It’s Not Ice Cream Anymore” analysis says that biblical names are popular for Boys (at least 6 of 10 from the bible); however, girls names are influenced by pop culture (as I interpret Isabella #1 as being influenced by Twilight’s main character, Isabella Swan. There are a few popular actresses with the name Emma: Emma Watson, Emma Stone, Emma Roberts. Same for Olivia: Olivia Wilde, Olivia Munn.). I think you get the picture

So, back to the lecture at hand, the states with the most unique baby names:

Boys: #1 Hawaii, Wyoming, Louisiana, Idaho, Oklahoma, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, Washington, #10 Oregon

Girls: #1 Hawaii, New Mexico, Mississippi, Nevada, Georgia, Wyoming, Arizona, Alaska, Maryland, #10 South Carolina

HI, WY appear on lists for both names

In contrast, these are the states with the least unique baby names, or highest percentage of top 10 names:

Boys: #1 New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Maine, New York, Tennessee, #10 Kentucky

Girls: #1 Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, West Virginia, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Kentucky, #10 Iowa

NH, RI, WV, MA, CT, KY appear on lists for both names.

I get that New Englanders are thought of as “stuffy” and “no fun” and therefore only give their kids names that other kids have, but it was a surprise to see West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Dakota and Iowa on the chez trendy list.

The biggest surprise to me was to see Louisiana on the list of uniquely named people. The article was pointing out that people that name their kids something unique is popular in the frontier states (something that mostly holds true for boy names, but not for girl names – 4 of the 10 states for unique girl names are in the south (i.e. not on the frontier).

LA’s place on this list of frontier states might have to do with the following (my opinion):

1. Southern LA’s, not including the City of New Orleans, isolated and cultural differences from the rest of the South and US

2. New Orleans’ population is somewhat known for names being passed down (lots of girls named Anne or Marie/a, lots of boys named Jr, III, IV, etc.) as well as a fair amount of ethnic names.

3. The unique heritage of Louisiana (which also ties directly in with the prevalence of ethnic names)

I welcome alternative ideas, or thoughts about the post in general.

Generally the post title was inspired by the article being found originally on Yahoo!.  All of these (with the exception of "uh") are the names of search engines I used to use.  I was an AltaVista man for the longest time and I generally eschewed Yahoo!...until there were things I couldn't find on AltaVista, that I could find with Yahoo!.  It's pretty much the same story of how I started using Google, and why it's my (and 91% of online users) top search engine.  There's also another slightly more clandestine joke here, and it's that in reference to "back to the lecture at hand" - a lyric from a Dr. Dre song on the 1992 album The Chronic...and the cadence of the post title is sort of in reference to another track on that same album, "The $20 Sack Pyramid" (e.g. EnVogue...uh, uh...Halle Berry...uh, uh...etc).