How many ???

So... one of the many fascinating things about the internet is the type of sites you stumble on while looking for something else. I had forgotten about the social security baby name database, which is a nifty little chart of the top 100 names for each gender by state. It is, of course, according to those who actually register for SS#s, which seems to be a mainstream thing now.

(Disclaimer: we are not announcing any new baby news- there is no new baby at this point! Just celebrating our almost 2 yr old!)

Most parents don't want a name in the top 10, unless they love-love-LOVE it or it's a family name. After that, it's all personal taste right? How common do you want your kid's name to be? When we chose the name Kaden, we hadn't heard it before, though we had heard of Aiden and Hayden.

The week he was born, another Cayden James was born in California (grandson of parishioners). Then we met up with a college buddy who lives in the same region as Jim's family, named Cayden. Our neighbor makes a friend at the playground- his name is Caden. Oh, and another parishioner has a baby girl, named... Cadence! All these kids are within a year of each other. So, wow, the name was popping up everywhere, with a variety of spellings.

Also, after he was born, I also vaguely remember reading on Swistle's baby name blog that popularity is getting harder to figure because of various spellings AND that right now the --EN name ending is popular. Names seem different but also familiar when they rhyme with that. Huh.

So where would his name be on the list? I checked it out.
#11 - Jayden. #16 Aiden. #59 Aidan. #76 Hayden. # 88 Jaden. #91 Ayden. #95 Caden #100 KADEN!

So... while there are a minimum of 9227 kids in the country named Caden/Kaden, there are over 55,000 with rhyming names from the list above. (This doesn't count the boys named: Ethan, Christian, Logan, Ryan, Dylan... )

Oooh, and then I realized I could search the top 500 names, so of course I did. (It's not like I should be doing laundry or freelance writing ...) And wa-la! We've got #152 Kayden, #173 Cayden, #190 Kaiden, #250 Caiden (#488 Zayden?), #665 Kaeden, #726 Kadin, #954 Kadyn! Ka-geez-bers! There's over 18500 kids named a variation of Kaden in the US... or at least 8% of kids his age. Huh.

What does this mean for real life? Uh... sorry, gotta go put the laundry away :)