Data stories

Questions the birth records can answer and most name sites cannot: which names collapsed after one year, whose bearers are oldest, which names one state uses far more than the rest of the country.

• Names that spiked once and never came back — A single year holding a fifth or more of every birth the name has ever recorded, then collapse.
• The names with the oldest living bearers — Where the median living American carrying the name is well past retirement.

Each story is a table drawn straight from the same data as the name pages, using the definitions on the methodology page. Nothing is written to a theme; the query comes first and the story is whatever it returns.