“For Baby Names, Jayden Rises to the Top - New York Times”

For Baby Names, Jayden Rises to the Top - New York Times

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 03:02 PM PST

Remember, City Room called it last year.

Jayden has become the most popular name for baby boys, with 872 male newborns given that name in 2008, according to an announcement made by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on Wednesday. It has surpassed perennial classics like Daniel, Michael, Matthew and David, which collectively round out the top five.

The baby name cognoscenti note that Jayden's rise is remarkable since there has historically been less innovation with boys names. Unlike girls names — Lisa, Jennifer, Madison and Ashley have risen and fallen within decades — the top boys names tend to be timeless, with Biblical or kingly flavors.

Nationwide, Jayden ranked only 11th last year, according to Social Security Administration data — respectable, but not a blockbuster.

The difference? New York's demographic mix. For whatever reason, Jayden is popular with minority groups. It has been the most popular boy's name among blacks and Hispanics in the city. Hispanics, specifically, seemed to have embraced the name with fervor. They may make up some 25 percent of the city's population, but they account for more than 50 percent of the Jaydens, with 463. "When you think of it in terms of actual Spanish, it's actually unpronounceable," said Laura Wattenberg, a baby name expert. "Hai-dane, or something like that."

Jayden also ranked 14th among Asian-American boys. But notably, it was a relatively dismal 60th among whites. Still, Ms. Wattenberg said, 60th is relatively high.

Why has it become so popular? Is it because of the Britney Spears effect (she named her son Jayden James in 2006)?

Ms. Wattenberg gives credit to Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith for naming their son Jaden in 1998: "For them, Jaden was a twist on Jada."

Since then, she has watched the ascent of Jayden and all its variant spellings (Jaden, Jaiden, Jaydan, Jaidon, etc.). But she said Ms. Spears standardized the spelling.

The name has a lot going for it. Notably, it ends in "n," which has become the most popular name ending in the two decades. "A third of all boys born in America will get a name ending in 'n,' which is historically bizarre," Ms. Wattenberg said. "It has taken over in a way that no ending has taken over before, for boys."

Also, it belongs in the "rhymes with Aiden" family, which also includes Hayden and Caiden (and all their variant spellings). Forty names rhyming with Aiden ranked in the top 1,000 names for newborn American boys in 2008, Ms. Wattenberg said.

Jayden has had a steady climb in New York City. It ranked second in 2007, and 10th the year before (though with all the variant spellings, we think Jayden was actually first in spirit).

Incidentally, Sophia ranks No. 1 among girls in the city, followed by Isabella, Emily, Olivia and Sarah. But the preferences varied between different ethnic groups. White parents favored Olivia. Hispanics' top pick was Ashley, while Madison became the new favorite with black families. Sophia, the top pick for Asian girls in 2007, stayed on top in 2008.

The rise and fall in the fashion of names has long fascinated City Room, especially since New York City's immigrant mix makes it different from the country at large. An analysis of baby names dating back to 1920 found that some names have fallen out of favor (like Giuseppe), while others have risen (like Fatoumata, a West African variant of Fatima).

We've always wondered what would happen if we made the city's underlying data available to the public to work with. So we asked the health department for baby names and created comma-separated value files, which can be downloaded and opened in Microsoft Excel.

The first one is all baby names dating back to 1920 [csv]. The second file is baby names broken down by ethnicity, but only back to 1990 [csv], when the health department started keeping standardized race data.

City Room hopes that people can do interesting visualizations or programming with them, perhaps in the same spirit as the programmers who have analyzed the 9/11 Wikileaks pager messages.

We, too, will be seeing what interesting things we can do with the baby name data.

Here is a breakdown of the top baby names for 2008 in New York City

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