The Baby Name Wizard

Is your name Jennifer, Melissa, Nicole, Heather? I’m guessing you’re also 40-something? How did I know that? I went to the NameVoyager chart on the Baby Name Wizard website. There you will see, in glorious, chronological 2-D interactive charting, the rise and fall of popular names over the last 120 years. Oh what a difference a century makes. In the NameMapper section, you can go to the “timeline” tab and enter the names of everyone you know—or possible names for your new baby—and see a chart of each name’s disbursement by geographic region, income, population density and even political affiliation. What’s so impressive about this site is not only the comprehensive, fun and unusual data about names, but also the masterfully conceived graphic interface. There is also a neat section called Namipedia where you give the first and/or last letter—or even a series of letters—and search for existing names that meet your syllabically intuitive fetish.