Baby-name-ometry?
A had always been under the impression that Gavin was not a common name. When a Gavin, not of RC, posted a comment recently, I noted that particular Gavin was posting from an IP address that did not resolve to New York. This sparked a bit of conversation and Zeke commented.
There are indeed a surprising amount of Gavins involved in some area or another of climate science. A quick Google finds, in addition to our friendly NASA Gavin:
.
Gavin Foster at the University of Bristol
Gavin Jennings, the Minister for the Environment and Climate Change in Australia
Gavin Young at Australian National University
Gavin Starks at a rather nifty company called AMEE
And an eponymous pussycat over at Tamino’s house
So… I wondered… Is Gavin a more common name than I thought? This pressing question vexed me. So, I rushed to the baby name voyager ( here), and entered “GAVIN”:
Evidently, the name “Gavin” (which evidently means “white falcon”) exhibits a “hockey stick” like shape with rapid escalation during the 90s. These days, nearly 3 out of every 1000 babies is named Gavin. I think it’s fair to say the popularity of that name is “unprecedented” in the US.
I then checked out my name, “Lucia” (which means “light”) :
Like “Gavin”, the name “Lucia” has risen in popularity, though nowhere near as dramatically. The popularity of the name “Lucia” seems to go from “cool” in the 50s to “lukewarm” now, with only 2 1/2 out of 10,000 babies named Lucia.
In addition to a recent rise, the popularity of the name Lucia shows ‘cooling’ in the 50s. I suspect if we computed the correlation between the name “Lucia” with observations of Global Mean Surface Temperature in thermometer record, we would find a quite high correlation coefficient!
How exciting! Maybe we can use these baby names in paleo reconstructions! 
I then wondered about Zeke. I discovered Zeke has never been in the top 1000 names for boy or girl babies in the US. So, even though Zeke blogs about climate, we will not be able to use his name in a reconstruction. How disappointing. 
Further Research
As some recall, Zeke and I previously discussed the “Leprechaun Theory of Global Warming”. We can now add a new twist to this theory: We can propose to add ‘baby-name-mometers’ to the collection of “tree-nometers” or “bore-hole-nometers” used in paleo-reconctructions. Those who are interested can enter names like “Roger” and “Anthony” to discover whether their names suggest “cooling” or “warming”.
Update
The things you learn from ads. . . I clicked an ad to “Huge selection, great deals on Gavin items” and discovered all sorts of “Gavin” items here. The list includes “Andrew Marc black coated canvas ‘Gavin’ briefcase”, “Hush Puppies Mens Gavin Shoes “, “Banana Republic Straight Gavin Chino”, “Paul Frank Men’s Gavin Sweater Zip Up “, and “Meister Gavin Sweater (Men’s)”. So, I guess even if you aren’t named Gavin, you can dress like a Gavin!
Written by lucia.Comments Closed: If you would like them re-opened, Contact Lucia
Comments
Douggerell (Comment#13379) May 6th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Very cool website. My own name displays a bell curve. I take this to mean I do not have a future in climate science.
Bill Illis (Comment#13380) May 6th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Personally, I think it is pretty poor for someone who seems to know a lot about climate science and would obviously know who “gavin” is, to post on the net using the name Gavin and then writing in a similar manner as well.
Andrew_KY (Comment#13383) May 6th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I feel a Spartacus moment coming on…
I’m Gavin!
Andrew
Zeke Hausfather (Comment#13386) May 6th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Having a unique name is a bit of a mixed bag in the age of easy googling; It certainly makes it hard to keep any secrets.
Also, I suspect that the results of our analysis is skewed by picking a relatively young scientist, given that names seem to display a strong temporal autocorrelation. If we were discussing near-octogenarian Wallace Broeker, for example, we would see a rather precipitous decline.
It also seems like there are interesting spacial characteristics of names. For example, it seems like Gavin was much more popular in Australia and the UK prior to moving to this side of the pond, given that none of the climate Gavins are originally from the states.
Andrew_FL (Comment#13387) May 6th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Andrew_KY-If you check our name, you will find we beat all the names mentioned so far. We control the horizontal! I also note bizarrely that Andrew experience a spike in popularity as a girl’s name in the 70’s and 80’s-Danged hippies!
Andrew_FL (Comment#13388) May 6th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Also, as far as correlation with temp, it looked promising until the “divergence” problem reared its ugly head once again.
lucia (Comment#13390) May 6th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Zeke–
The baby name site in the US also has a map feature.
Going by the dark blue, viral propagation of American “Gavin” seems to have started in South Dakota, infected Minnesota moved south along the Mississipi, and then spread out. Texas seems to remain an non-Gavin stronghold, as do some states in on the east and west.
I couldn’t make maps for Zeke or Lucia. I suspect we’ll see Lucia correlate with states with large Hispanic populations. ( Believe it or not, when I was a kid, my girl scout leader insisted I should switch to pronouncing my name “Lusha” because otherwise people would think I was Mexican. I told her that wasn’t a problem, I’d just tell them I was born in El Salvador and named for my Cuban grandmother. I could tell she did not think this was a solution to my “problem”. She continued to call me “Lusha”; I quit girl scouts.)
lucia (Comment#13392) May 6th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Bill-
The Gavin who visited does share some of RC_Gavin’s writing style. But… then…the IP was the UK! I suspect he didn’t really think about the possibility of confusion and just used his name. People named “mark” or “james” do the same thing. I’m sure it never occurred to him his writing style might sound similar to others UK scientists.
If he reappears, I might suggest he uses Gavin_XX with XX of his choice. I suggested the Andrews do that and it worked out.
Otherwise, for some “key” names, I may need to write a script that tags on “Not RC” or something. It can be confusing.
Andrew_KY (Comment#13393) May 6th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Andrew_FL,
I also see that at our peak in Number of Andrews per Million Babies the around the 80’s we were only ranked 13th. But as our NAMB declined after that we retained a Top Ten ranking until 2007, when the graph ends.
That means SOMETHING!
-Gavin …err… Andrew
Andrew_FL (Comment#13395) May 6th, 2009 at 10:58 am
It means, by my logic, that the diversity of names generally is increasing, so that the percentage points we lost weren’t taken up by any one or a few common names, but a lot of obscure ones. So our rank went up, even as our name became “less” common.
lucia (Comment#13397) May 6th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Andrew_FL– I suspect your theory is correct. Speculating, I think radio, tv, and the internet have all lead to parents learning more names and selecting more different names.
Zeke Hausfather (Comment#13399) May 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Well, and the growing ethnic and cultural diversity of the United States.
Andrew_KY (Comment#13400) May 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Andrew_FL,
Do you think the total number of Baby Names increased or decreased after the 80’s?
Andrew
Scooter (Comment#13401) May 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I was unaware of the name’s history. Looks like maybe “Gavin Rossdale” was the main contributor to the jump in popularity, if the Wikipedia description of his album being very popular in 1994 is correct. Or else merely due to the name appearing in some baby naming book.
Andrew_KY (Comment#13403) May 6th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I mean Babies Named Per Year. Did the trend of Total Babies Named go down or up, while NAMB decreased?
Andrew
Andrew_FL (Comment#13404) May 6th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Well, lessee….
I would go by birth rates and it looks like…not so much change really.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html
Andrew_FL (Comment#13405) May 6th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Okay, I retract that. I graphed it and babies did trend up. Slightly.
Alan S. Blue (Comment#13406) May 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
So…
How good exactly is the correlation between “Number of babies named Gavin” and global temperature?
Error bars? Can we reject the hypothesis “Naming babies ‘Gavin’ causes global warming?” with straight statistics?
Andrew_FL (Comment#13407) May 6th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Alan-I seem to recall a hilarious graph in “An Inconvenient Book” which showed a “correlation” between between names that start with C and temps-can’t remember perfectly, though.
David Jay (Comment#13409) May 6th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Re: Zeke @ 10:25 “If we were discussing near-octogenarian Wallace Broeker, for example, we would see a rather precipitous decline.”
Wanna bet the major decline in “Wallace” began in 1964?
Causation, not correlation
Andrew_FL (Comment#13413) May 6th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Nope, peaked in the 20’s, fell from there.
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