Comment by amyjess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amyjess | Hacker News Reader

I legally changed my name last year, so I have the fortune of having two sets of names to play with.

Here are my observations (note that I'm not actually posting my deadname here, but I'll still post my thoughts on it):

Old first name: My parents were spot on. I'm well within the typical age, and the median year was only four years off from my birth year. It had a very high spike in the 70s and 80s, and it's since gone down to 1970 levels and stayed there.

Old middle name: On the other hand, my parents gave me an old man's name. The age range starts at 47, and I'm 30. It peaked in the early '60s and was a curiosity by the time I was born.

New first name (Amy): I'm a little off here, but not by much. I'm only a year outside the typical range. When I was born, it had already been in decline for a few years, but it had far from bottomed out yet.

New middle name (Jessica): Spot on. Median age is only three years away from my actual birth year, and I was born really close to the peak. Oddly enough, when I was putting together my new name, I originally wanted Jessica to be my first name, but I ended up changing my mind and making it my middle name because I liked Amy better. Shame it crashed so hard in the last few years.

Actually, I'd say your parents were spot on with both your first and middle name, because middle names are usually picked in honor of someone in their or their parent's generation (usually a relative).

The other thing is for the "classiest" names (ie most fashionable) you want to be at the head of the trend not at the height of popularity as it's become "common" by then.

And, to me, having a modern middle name (Jessica) actually sounds out of place.

That's interesting.

Funny thing is, I went back and forth so much. I could've very easily ended up with a much less common middle name.

After choosing "Amy" over "Jessica" for my first name, it took me a while to settle on a middle name. For a while, I wanted it to alliterate and very nearly chose "Abigail" (which was uncommon when I was born but is very common now). Then, I decided I wanted something truly uncommon and nearly decided on "Sunset" (it isn't even in the name database here, so I guess it was more uncommon than I thought!). Ultimately, I began to regret not picking "Jessica" as my first name, so I made it my middle name.

No regrets, though. My new initials form a tri-ligature, so I'm really glad I went with it.

I'm not comfortable giving my old and new names, or my year of birth, BUT I can share that my first and last names before transition were very female (I've never met a guy with either of them) and my post transition first and last names are very male (although my first name often has female versions). All of my names have been family names, with minor spelling changes because of language changes as ancestors migrated to the U.S.

Old first name:

- as female: the peak, of over 20,000, was a decade after I was born, stayed there approximately 15 years and has had a slow decline since

- as male: actually follows a similar curve, but the peak was only over 100

Old middle name:

- as female: the peak, of over 10,000, was between the World Wars, went through a steady decline until a decade before my birth, when it went into a sharp decline

- as male: the peak, of over over 25, was a few years after peaking as a female name, then went through a steady decline until 20 years before my birth and has leveled out at 10+ a year

New first name:

- as male: first peak, of over 10,000, was around my birth, then went through a small dip and peaked again a couple decades later

- as female: similar to the male curve with the two peaks breaking 50 a year

New middle name:

- as male: the peak, of over 2,000, was between the World Wars, went through a sharp decline until just after WWII, when it leveled out for a couple of decades, then went through another sharp decline before leveling out around my birth.

- as female: extremely sporadic, mostly due to the low numbers of women getting this name; the range went from just over 20 in one sample year to none for almost 20 of the sample years

Hmm... I didn't even think about running my names as the other gender. I ran my old names as male and my new names as female.

I hadn't heard of any of them except my old middle name being gender-neutral, and even in that case, I've only ever heard of one woman with my old middle name (nobody I know, either; she's a famous actress). Kinda feel sorry for all the dudes out there named Amy (well, unless they're really trans girls, but that's statistically so unlikely)... at least boys named Jessica can go by Jessie.

Comparing across genders now, the patterns are actually similar across genders, just with fewer numbers. My old middle name though, for girls, is very spiky with lots of very short ups and downs, while as a boys' name, the graph was smoother. I wonder if that correlates with the release dates of a certain actress' movies. Also, by far and above the most common of the four across gender lines was my old first name... it was the only one that ever broke 300 (and only barely).

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