Thursday, September 15, 2016

Western Names 1: Surfer Names

A while back, I did an analysis of "Southern" names, and after recently returning from SoCal, was inspired to do one for Western names as well.
Instead of the entire "Western" region, I'm only doing the Pacific Western states (CA, OR, WA, AK, HI), but I imagine I'll tackle the Mountain Western states sometime soon as well.

Here the "most Pacific" names (by % of babies given that name) from the Pacific states' combined Top 1000:
Boys:
  1. Makoa
  2. Kekoa
  3. Keoni
  4. Koa
  5. Arley
  6. Kainoa
  7. Arman
  8. Everardo
  9. Noa
  10. Sunny
  11. Arvin
  12. Salvador
  13. Madison
  14. Ulises
  15. Emiliano
  16. Nikita
  17. Rigoberto
  18. Gonzalo
  19. Octavio
  20. Ernesto
Nice to see several Hawaiian names. <3
Girls:
  1. Izel
  2. Sequoia
  3. Jaylene
  4. Emi
  5. Citlali
  6. Xitlali
  7. Darlene
  8. Adilene
  9. Jayleen
  10. Vicky
  11. Arlene
  12. Hana
  13. Yaretzy
  14. Julieta
  15. Itzel
  16. Maribel
  17. Belinda
  18. Noemi
  19. Darla
  20. Jaylah
Okay, I was expecting lots of Spanish names. I was not expecting all those "leens"!

To narrow things a bit further, from the Pacific Top 500:
Boys:
  1. Salvador
  2. Emiliano
  3. Ernesto
  4. Damian
  5. Francisco
  6. Ruben
  7. Joaquin
  8. Ismael
  9. Saul
  10. Esteban
  11. Andy
  12. Gustavo
  13. Adan
  14. Vicente
  15. Armando
  16. Alfredo
  17. Maximiliano
  18. Mateo
  19. Valentino
  20. Sergio
Girls:
  1. Jaylene
  2. Jayleen
  3. Hana
  4. Julieta
  5. Itzel
  6. Noemi
  7. Jaylah
  8. Aileen
  9. Guadalupe
  10. Monserrat
  11. Yaretzi
  12. Aimee
  13. Esmeralda
  14. Julissa
  15. Kenia
  16. Paloma
  17. Frida
  18. Montserrat
  19. Irene
  20. Kassandra

And finally, the most Pacific names from the states' Top 100:
Boys:
  1. Damian
  2. Mateo
  3. Diego
  4. Jesus
  5. Ivan
  6. Santiago
  7. Angel
  8. Leonardo
  9. Julian
  10. Miguel
  11. Adrian
  12. Juan
  13. Carlos
  14. Jose
  15. Luis
  16. Nathan
  17. Sebastian
  18. Aaron
  19. Giovanni
  20. Elias
Girls:
  1. Valerie
  2. Ximena
  3. Delilah
  4. Alina
  5. Camila
  6. Valeria
  7. Alexa
  8. Melanie
  9. Luna
  10. Natalia
  11. Amy
  12. Athena
  13. Valentina
  14. Andrea
  15. Nicole
  16. Samantha
  17. Sofia
  18. Jasmine
  19. Melody
  20. Victoria
I might be biased, but I think those are pretty great lists! Love all those multilingual names. 

For comparison's sake, here is the Pacific Top 10, alongside the National Top 10:


Pacific
National
1.
Noah
Noah
2.
Jacob
Liam
3.
Ethan
Mason
4.
Daniel
Jacob
5.
Alexander
William
6.
Matthew
Ethan
7.
Liam
James
8.
Jayden
Alexander
9.
Sebastian
Michael
10.
Benjamin
Benjamin


Pacific
National
1.
Sophia
Emma
2.
Emma
Olivia
3.
Mia
Sophia
4.
Olivia
Ava
5.
Isabella
Isabella
6.
Emily
Mia
7.
Sofia
Abigail
8.
Abigail
Emily
9.
Ava
Charlotte
10.
Charlotte
Harper
And should you be interested in the full Pacific Top 1000, it is here, in Google Sheets. :)


I also wanted to go a bit further this time, and see what names appeared only in the Pacific states, but the results were much smaller, and more obscure, than I'd expected. They were also all in either CA or HI.
CA: Harut, Gevork, Mher (boys); Serly, Maneh, Jazzleen, Anmol (girls)
HI: Lawaia, Kiai (boys); Hilinai (girls)

So, I settled for finding the most disproportionately common (by %) names in each state. (So, for instance, you're about 8x more likely to run into a Narek in CA than in the rest of the US as a whole)
CA: Narek, Sahib, Arley, Everardo, Sunny (boys); Raylene, Izel, Avleen, Arleen, Jazlene (girls)
HI: Kaeo, Kaimana, Ikaika, Makoa, Kaizen (boys); Lilinoe, Mahina, Anela, Kalena, Kalea (girls)
AK: Paxson, Killian, Ronan, Gideon, Walter (boys); Aurora, Juniper, Sage, Cassidy, Kinley (girls)
OR: Sage, Soren, Malakai, Kellen, Arlo (boys); Opal, Juniper, Faye, Louisa, Esme (girls)
WA: Soren, Anton, Anders, Maxim, Odin (boys); Roslyn, Pepper, Linnea, Opal, Bentley (girls)

I came across a couple interesting quirks:
--Firstly, I initially narrowed my search for "most representative" to the top 2/5 of names for each state (the lists vary in length quite a bit, with the largest, CA, having 14x as many names as the smallest, AK), but I just had to stretch that a bit in Alaska so I could include Paxson.
There were 33 Paxsons born in the US last year. 10 were in AK. 10! 1/3 of all new Paxsons were born in 4th least populated state.
--Secondly, by the indecisiveness of Oregon parents, and/or some oddity in how Oregon birth certificates are filled out, over 60% of babies officially named Unknown in the entire US were born in OR.

And no, the few repeating names are not errors; those names are just much more concentrated in both states for whatever reasons.


So what sort of names are the "least Pacific"? Turns out, modern creative spellings and innovations: Brantley, Braylon, Brycen, Landyn, Karter; Kennedi, Ryleigh, Londyn, Brynlee, Kayleigh, and the like. 

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