You would have had a very, very different name.
Those “most popular baby name” charts can be so fickle. Remember when every girl seemed to be named Jennifer? There’s no trace of that moniker on the most recent top 20 girls’ names list, with Emma ruling them all.
Now, Time.com has a fun new addictive tool that shows you what you’d be called today if you had a name with the same popularity as the day you arrived into the world.
Plug in your name, year of birth and gender and voila. The online gizmo reveals your “Today Name.”
Let’s say you were born in 1985 and were named Jennifer, that year’s third most popular girl’s name. Your “Today Name” would be Sophia, the third most popular girl’s name of 2014.
You can also go back in time to find your “1970s name” or “1940s name” — all the way back to the 1890s. All of you Jennifers out there would be named Barbara in the 1950s, for example, if your parents had chosen the third most popular girl’s name of that decade.
The choices are based on the the United States’ Social Security Administration’s baby name data.
It’s worth noting that parents choose names based on a lot of factors other than popularity. Still, it’s fun to see how name trends change over time.
We’ve taken the top 10 boys’ and girls’ names from 1980 and put them into the app.
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Is your name one of the most popular baby names in Australia?