So, it’s been forever since I posted. Got busier at work, the weather has been nice and I’ve gone on several trips- typical excuses. But I hope to get back to some more regular posts!
The 2014 baby names were released and I hope to load them into my database soon. In the meantime, here’s a fun list of names that saw dramatic increases in the last several years and to what or whom that can be attributed. I compiled the list by calculating which names saw the largest percentage increase in a two year timespan, filtering out very rare names, alternate spellings and only looking at the last 10 years. Here are the top 10…
| Name | Year | Count | 2 Years Prior* | % Increase | Reason | |
| Cataleya | F | 2012 | 636 | < 5 | 31,700% | Female assassin in movie Columbiana |
| Jaslene | F | 2008 | 872 | 5 | 17,000% | Winner of America’s Next Top Model Season 8 |
| Kanye | M | 2004 | 507 | 5 | 10,040% | Rapper Kanye West |
| Rihanna | F | 2006 | 571 | 6 | 9,400% | Singer Rihanna*** |
| Allisson | F | 2008 | 767 | 12 | 6,300% | Mexican TV star Allisson Lozz |
| Talan | M | 2006 | 1058 | 20 | 5,200% | Reality star on MTV’s Laguna Beach |
| Audrina | F | 2007 | 412 | 8 | 5,000% | Reality star on MTV’s The Hills |
| Akeelah | F | 2006 | 403 | 8 | 5,000% | Movie Akeelah and the Bee |
| Marely | F | 2008 | 1004 | 21 | 4,700% | ? |
| Miley | F | 2007 | 1232 | 26 | 4,600% | Actress/singer Miley Cyrus from Disney’s Hannah Montana**** |
*If the name did not appear in the database two years prior, I assigned it a value of 2. It’s hard to say whether it had zero names or up to four names, so it was a compromise. Plus assigning it at 0 made the percentages seem ridiculously high**- it would have been 63,000% for Cataleya, for example.
**Because 31,700% isn’t ridiculously high at all. 🙂
***Her real name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty
****Her real name is Destiny Hope Cyrus
Kelly Loves Data 