Having seen a number of attempts to visualize this topic, I'm always left thinking there might be a better way to show both the popularity and changing usage of unisex names in the United States. The Social Security Administration provides data on names by year of birth all the way back to 1880, so I decided to give it a quick try.
A couple notes:
First, the names are actual names on applications for Social Security numbers. That means "Charlie" only includes people whose actual name is "Charlie," not "Charles." Second, the popularity indicated in the chart is relative to the name's own peak year, so you can't tell whether one name is more popular than another from this chart.
My complete R script is here. The chart itself is made with d3, and it's all readily viewable in the page source.
