Name Lanterns

Every name is a lantern

Each lantern is one name for one sex, in one year of US births: boys on the left bank, girls on the right. Press play and 146 years go by, from 1880 to 2025.

Reading the sky

• Height is rank. Ranks 1–20 are the big lanterns at the top, 21–50 the small ones below them, and 51–100 the dim lights further back. Search for one of those to bring it forward.
• Size is share. Every lantern has a floor so its name fits; above that it grows with the name's share of that year's births. One scale covers every year, so John in 1880 (8.7% of recorded boys) is the largest lantern there ever is. Size shows order and change, not exact counts: point at a lantern for the numbers.
• Gold is a shared name. In a year when both boys and girls get a name and the smaller side is at least 20% of the two together, its lantern turns gold and a ribbon crosses the river to its other side. If that side is outside its own top 100, it is the small gold light at the front of the far lanterns.
• No lantern goes out. A name that leaves the top 100 drifts out to the sea of lights in the distance, and can drift back.

The data

• US Social Security Administration, national baby name data (names.zip), 1880–2025. A US federal government work, in the public domain.
• A name is recorded only when at least 5 babies of one sex got it that year. Rarer names are not in the data at all.
• Before 1937 many people never applied for a Social Security card, so the early years are undercounted.
• Shares are out of recorded births: all babies of that sex whose name was recorded that year. In 2025 that is 3,315,343 babies; SSA counts 3,593,747 card applications in all.

Made by LifeVen. Everything you see is drawn in code; no photos, no models.