See how popular your given name was when you were born:

[sl8]

The thread about male/female names made me curious.

The search engine is fairly self explanatory. For a search term, I used "given name Madison" (without the quotes).
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=given+name+madison

Of course, Wolfram Alpha is useful for a lot more than names. You could easily spend the afternoon there.

[handmade34]

1. K&R n/t

[rzemanfl]

2. Thank you. K&R. n/t

[yonder]

3. Thanks, that was fun

[OriginalGeek]

5. Sorry yonder -

Meant to reply to main thread.

this is what I accidentally put under Yonder. (over Yonder?):

I'm 1 in about 1680.

kinda cool i guess. I'm a III. My grandpa was born in 1921 and my dad in 44 and me in 63. It's a pretty old-fashioned name so I don't see it a lot but there are other spellings for it too and I probably didn't get those counted in the chart.

[yonder]

6. ...

[Collimator]

7. I looked at the graph. . .

And the most common age for people with my name. I was surprised to learn that the average age is 54, when I am 62. This means that my name became more common eight years after my birth. Considering that there were at least three other girls with my name in the seventh grade, (which is when I gained a boy nickname based on my last name), I found that a little hard to believe.

One thing that a computational site like that cannot tell you is the general cachet associated with a particular name. Those can change with the era. Some writer pointed out that "Heather" brings to mind young, sexy women right now. But given another generation, everyone will have a wrinkled, old Aunt Heather and perhaps "Mildred" will be the name associated with desirable young women.

[sl8]

11. Perceptive observation about the cachet associated with different names.

I've had thoughts along similar lines, but you express it much better than I. Among other things, it makes me wonder what other predudices I might have, but haven't recognized yet.

After running through a few names, I also think that the "most common age" figure seems lower than the area under the curve seems to suggest. Don't know why.

[Collimator]

12. Don't think of them as prejudices. . .

. . . Just culturally encoded "shorthand". For example, adverts for hypoallergenic products usually feature a fair-skinned redhead. Obviously, there is an idea that redheads have delicate, more sensitive skin than average.

Commercials for chocolate often show models with rich brown hair--even displaying the hair laid out in an artist manner. This is meant to convey both the color and sensual nature of the product. Using models with rich brown skin is more likely to be received as racially insensitive.

Getting back to names--fun-loving, easy-going female characters in TV and movies have names like, "Katie" or "Becky". Characters named "Catherine" are usually portrayed as haughty, formal or unfeeling.

I read an article that mentioned that men in business often benefit from using casual versions of their names. "Bob" instead of Robert makes a CEO more approachable. But substituting "Vicky" for Victoria, or "Cathy" for Catherine tends to diminish a female executive's authority or, cachet of competence.

[sl8]

8. I searched for the given name, "Barack":

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=given+name+barack

[Fla Dem]

9. What a great and fun web site. Thank you.

[Dem2theMax]

10. Apparently, I'm quite rare.

In my whole life, I've only ever met one other person with my name. And one who had it as a middle name.