Baby Names

My wife and I will be welcoming our 3rd child into our family (and this world) in early October. Like most parents, we have spent countless hours pouring over books with pages and pages of potential names for our new family member. It can be both fun and stressful choosing the perfect name for a person you have never met or seen before.

While the books we have used do an OK job, two online resources offer a more interesting look at American names over the years:

- The Social Security Administration web site gives hard numbers on the popularity of all names through the decades: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

- Another great resource is The Baby Name Wizard: http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html This offers a great graphical interface along with some cool features - click on a name you like and it will give a graphical representation of the popularity of any name throughout the last 120 years.

Have fun!