A link to begin - Nameberry today have done an interesting post with a 'Baby Name Timeline', US-focussed but very interesting. Reminds me of the great lists in J Besnard's 'La Cote des Prénoms' which show the most popular names in France over specific decades - an easy way to see the trends.
Back to the 'new' names idea. I just have a graph(because pictures are fun!) to show:
This is the number of names from US top 100 in each of the books. As mentioned yesterday, very few female names are in Camden in 17th century, while Baby Name Wizard has almost all of the names - Camila is the only one that is missing. I haven't included any names that were listed for the wrong gender (e.g. Avery or Aubrey as male names, rather than female). The Collins book by J Cresswell is the only book where there are more of the female top 100 than male - I find this rather surprising, especially as it is such a small book.
Of the books that are close in date: Yonge seems more extensive than Moody, and Withycombe than Weekley. The Baby Name Wizard - possibly due to its focus on style and US names, is the most up-t0-date of the 2000s books. There is quite a leap in coverage between Withycombe, published in 1977, and Dunkling, in 1983. For more details on these books see my previous post.
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