| 21.April.2006
The Baby Name Wizard, NameVoyager is
a gorgeous example of a Java based application that uses interactivity and data
from the Social Security Administration of baby names to display name trends
from the 1880's to 2004. The massive data is cleverly visualized by the pink
and blue graph that increases in proportion to the popularity of names at a given
time in history. The Name Voyager provides an overview of the data set, allows
zoom & filter, and displays details on demand.
The first view is the big picture -- an overview of the name applet.
The series of stripes represent all the names in the database. The
x-axis corresponds to date and the y-axis corresponds to the frequency
of names. For example, each stripe is a name, and the thickness is
the frequency of the name along the given timeline. Pink stripes
are for girls and blue stripes are for boys. The intensity of the
color represents currently popular names.
Type a couple letters and the
applet will visualize the letters by displaying names that begin
with the letters
The letters 'AN' yields a graph with the prominent stripes for popular
names such as Anna, Annie, Andrew, and Anthony. There are some thinner
stripes for Ann and Angel.
Clicking on a name stripe will display details of the name and the popularity
of that name alone in the graph. When 'Angela' is clicked, one knows
that the girl's name ranked 7th in popularity in the 1970's.
It was interesting to note unusual names such as Mercedes or
Hunter were popular in the later half of the century. My name, Adeline,
was very popular during 1890-1940 when it drastically dropped off.
A few popped up again in 2004, and I wondered if the old fashioned name
was making a come back. Not only is it fun to look up one's own name
in the applet, but others, too. It is fun precisely because the overview,
zoom & filter, and details are displayed seamlessly despite the massive
data set.
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