What are the chances?

Have you ever wondered how common your name is? Well, you needn’t wonder any longer, especially if you live in the US.

This website HERE tracks name popularity, up to the year 2021. In that year, the odds of a child being called Oliva OR Liam, the most popular name for girls and boys, was a bit over 1%. 25 years earlier, being called Michael OR Emily was 1.75%, so we have become a bit more diffuse.

I stumbled across this website when I was chatting to Ky about ridiculous names, and I gave the example of “Spade” as a particularly silly example. I mean, who calls their kid Spade?

Well, according to this website, in 2021, there were SEVEN children who were called Spade. You probably haven’t met one, there is only a 1.9% chance that you will ever meet a single Spade in your entire life (assuming you meet 10k people). To put that in perspective, there is 99.958% chance you will meet a Sarah in your life.

At least you’ll know when you meet one, there aren’t many nicknames for this unusual name. After all, you have to “call a spade a spade”!