Friday, June 24, 2005

Fewer and Fewer Jeffs in the World

This is one of those things that probably has some major culture-changing implications but I just don't know what they are: there are fewer and fewer "Jeffs" in the USA each year. Here's the recent news from the Social Security Administration:

Year of birth Rank
2002 980
2001 907
2000 932
1999 909
1998 Not in Top 1000
1997 978
1996 881
1995 879
1994 714
1993 716
1992 696
1991 643
1990 644

Perhaps this is just another sign of the times that the end is near? I think LaHaye and Jenkins covered this in their tenth book: "The Remnant: The Few Remaining Jeffs".

Click on the link above and let me know how your name rises and falls in the previous decade!

4 comments:

Jeff A. Spry said...

I'm a TREND baby. I expanded the search for my name back to 100 years. When I was born in 1966, the name "Jeff" ranked 72nd in the country. Just four years earlier, it was all the way up to 44th (the highest up the ladder a Jeff has ever gone).

Beyond that, the name was always solidly in the top 200/top 300 for most of the century before reaching double digits from 1959 to 1968. The name really took a nose-dive in the early 80s.

Anonymous said...

Bruce was ranked 239 in 1990 and slowly worked it's way down to 429 by 2004. I'm going to challenge your statement "fewer Jeffs". It is possible that a name could drop in rank while rising in total number of people. You'd have to factor in birth and death rates and other stuff like that, but hopefully there really are fewer Jeffs in the world.

Anonymous said...

Michael,

That's real original.

Jim Pemberton said...

When I was born in 1966, James (my given name) was #3. Now, it's ranked #17. Doing worse, but still towards the top relative to "Jeff". Not as good as "Michael". No wonder you gotta call last names in the tenor section.