Cross correlations of the American baby names

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the correlations in American baby names over a century, revealing stable cultural groups that reorganize in the late 20th century, demonstrating a method to quantify cultural evolution through name data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantitative approach to study cultural evolution by analyzing cross correlations of baby names over a long time span.

Findings

Identification of stable cultural groups across decades

Detection of a significant reorganization in cultural patterns in the late 20th century

Potential extension of the method to other cultural traits

Abstract

The quantitative description of cultural evolution is a challenging task. The most difficult part of the problem is probably to find the appropriate measurable quantities that can make more quantitative such evasive concepts as, for example, dynamics of cultural movements, behavior patterns and traditions of the people. A strategy to tackle this issue is to observe particular features of human activities, i.e. cultural traits, such as names given to newborns. We study the names of babies born in the United States of America from 1910 to 2012. Our analysis shows that groups of different correlated states naturally emerge in different epochs, and we are able to follow and decrypt their evolution. While these groups of states are stable across many decades, a sudden reorganization occurs in the last part of the twentieth century. We think that this kind of quantitative analysis can be possibly extended to other cultural traits: although databases covering more than one century (as the one we used) are rare, the cultural evolution on shorter time scales can be studied thanks to the fact that many human activities are usually recorded in the present digital era.