Names
I decided to do some research on names for the new dog. For instance, if I was going to name him "Kevin" then I wanted to make sure that there wasn't a belief that naming a dog Kevin was bad luck, or that dogs named Kevin are considered a delicacy in Burma. I didn't find anything like that, but I did find out that Kevin is Irish and means handsome and/or beloved (I think the dog looks kind of like Kevin Costner who is both handsome and beloved).
I also found a neat site run by the Social Security Administration where they rank the popularity of different names by year. I guess they know everyone's name and date of birth. If a name falls in the top 1000, then it will be listed. You can also pull up the popularity of names over time. For instance, in the year I was born, Michael, John, and David were the most popular boy names (Lisa, Mary, and Karen were the most popular for girls). That year Kevin was number 13, about the highest it ever got. In 2005, Jacob, Michael, and Joshua were the most popular names for boys and Emily, Emma, and Madison were the most popular for girls. Meanwhile, Edward has gone from 29th to 134th, putting it behind even Trevor at 112th.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/
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Comments (2)
Did you see this morning's paper about some of Atlanta's famous people's dogs? Clark Howard has 2 dogs and they are named "Quicktrip" and "Cosco". That's pretty good.
Posted by Mom | August 16, 2006 12:23 PM
I was surprised to find Jeb ranked at all. And while they say you have to be in top 1000, that doesn't seem to be entirely true given 1974:
Rank for Jeb:
1981 - 988
1978 - 953
1974 - 1003
My SS card says Jeb because when I was 13, I filled out the application to open a savings account at Decatur Federal so that Mom could get some dishes. To this day I wonder if I will ever get any social security since Jeb is not my real name.
Posted by Jeb | August 17, 2006 9:21 PM