As First Lady, Popularity of Babies Named "Hillary" Dropped by an Unprecedented 90%
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This is kind of a silly post but I noticed an article entitled “Poor, Poor Hillary” on R-Bloggers from a blog that is no longer in commission. This blog came up as a result of its similarity with a recent post of mine, “Hillary Clinton’s Biggest 2016 Rival: Herself” in which I examine the quality of the press coverage of Hillary over the last year and how it has revolved around never ending scandals.
In the “Poor, Poor Hillary” article, the author makes note that the popularity of naming babies Hillary fell dramatically during her tenure as First Lady. I found this an interesting idea and decided to expand upon it to see if a fall in popularity was typical of First Ladies. Looking back at the last eight I found that all of them were associated with a drop in popularity of the first name.
Table 1: Drop in popularity of first name as a ratio of frequency at end of term divided by frequency the year before beginning of term.
From Table 1, we can see that the name “Hillary” dropped the most in popularity over her term as First Lady by a whopping 90%, followed by Laura (Bush) 62%, and distantly Michelle (Obama) 48%. Nancy retained the most popularity by only falling by 16% while First Lady.
When we look at Figure 1 we can see that naming popularity seems to be heavily affected by First Ladies. Most names experienced a steady downward trend in popularity. The name “Rosalynn” is an exception as it peaked in popularity during the Carter administration before falling by the end to have risen in popularity once again.
The name “Hillary” is very unique in this pattern as unlike most names, it was growing rapidly in popularity prior to the Clinton administration. However, early into the Clinton administration the popularity dropped rapidly falling to pre-1980s levels for the name. Except for a small rally in during the 2007/2008 primary campaign against Obama, it has not recovered.
This massive drop in popularity is not only exceptional for its magnitude but because it completely reversed the trend in naming going on up to that point. This is in stark contrast to the other names Betty, Nancy, Laura, and Michelle which were generally loosing popularity since the 1970s. It is somewhat difficult to see how much popularity they have lost since I scaled down everything above 1 to 3% in scale.
From Figure 2 we can see that many of the downward trends in popularity of names preexisted before First Lady status. Looking at this graph is it easy to suspect that names such as Michelle and Laura have fallen in popularity not because of the lack of popularity of them as First Ladies but because of an ongoing general trend for those names.
This analysis is very easy to do. All of the names are taken from the Social Security baby names list released each year. The code (without comments, apologies) can be found on GitHub.
In the “Poor, Poor Hillary” article, the author makes note that the popularity of naming babies Hillary fell dramatically during her tenure as First Lady. I found this an interesting idea and decided to expand upon it to see if a fall in popularity was typical of First Ladies. Looking back at the last eight I found that all of them were associated with a drop in popularity of the first name.
Table 1: Drop in popularity of first name as a ratio of frequency at end of term divided by frequency the year before beginning of term.
First | Last | Tenure | Drop |
| 1969-1974 | |||
| 1974-1977 | |||
| 1977-1981 | |||
| 1981-1989 | |||
| 1989-1993 | |||
| 1993-2001 | |||
| 2001-2009 | |||
| 2009-present |
From Table 1, we can see that the name “Hillary” dropped the most in popularity over her term as First Lady by a whopping 90%, followed by Laura (Bush) 62%, and distantly Michelle (Obama) 48%. Nancy retained the most popularity by only falling by 16% while First Lady.
 |
| Figure 1: Change in popularity of baby names super imposed over terms. The popularity has been scaled so that 1 is the peak of popularity of the baby name over the years as First Lady (or the one year prior). Any values above 1 have been scaled to 3% of their original size. |
When we look at Figure 1 we can see that naming popularity seems to be heavily affected by First Ladies. Most names experienced a steady downward trend in popularity. The name “Rosalynn” is an exception as it peaked in popularity during the Carter administration before falling by the end to have risen in popularity once again.
The name “Hillary” is very unique in this pattern as unlike most names, it was growing rapidly in popularity prior to the Clinton administration. However, early into the Clinton administration the popularity dropped rapidly falling to pre-1980s levels for the name. Except for a small rally in during the 2007/2008 primary campaign against Obama, it has not recovered.
This massive drop in popularity is not only exceptional for its magnitude but because it completely reversed the trend in naming going on up to that point. This is in stark contrast to the other names Betty, Nancy, Laura, and Michelle which were generally loosing popularity since the 1970s. It is somewhat difficult to see how much popularity they have lost since I scaled down everything above 1 to 3% in scale.
 |
| Figure 2: This is the same information as Figure 1 except values above 1 are on the same scale as values below 1. |
From Figure 2 we can see that many of the downward trends in popularity of names preexisted before First Lady status. Looking at this graph is it easy to suspect that names such as Michelle and Laura have fallen in popularity not because of the lack of popularity of them as First Ladies but because of an ongoing general trend for those names.
This analysis is very easy to do. All of the names are taken from the Social Security baby names list released each year. The code (without comments, apologies) can be found on GitHub.
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