The Baby Name Wizard Magically Sucks Your Time Away

My friend Jimmy, who loves babies and used to regularly check the Mt. Sinai Virtual Nursery until they, er, password-protected it, introduced me today to the Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager. Here's the official explanation of what it does:

"An interactive portrait of America's name choices. Start with a "sea" of nearly 5000 names. Type a letter, and you'll zoom in to focus on how that initial has been used over the past century. Then type a few more letters, or a name. Each stripe is a timeline of one name, its width reflecting the name's changing popularity. If a name intrigues you, click on its stripe for a closer look."

You will spend more time than you think playing with this thingamadoodle, regardless of whether there are children in your future. You will look up your name, your grandparents' names, your pets' names, the name of your nemesis.

Who knew, except maybe Wil Wheaton, that people started naming their children "Ryker" in the '90s, or that "Pink" was a boys' name in the early 20th century? It's also fascinating to see which old-timey names have come back in the 2000s wave of retro names, and which haven't. Ella, Isabel, Daisy, Grace, and Oscar have come back, but not Violet, Eva, Harry, Hazel, or Leta.