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Baby Names Project
Baby Names Project
Baby Names Project
Anna Clarkson
I chose to look at the names of the children of the presidents throughout history. I narrowed it down to kids who
were known, which in this case meant they lived in the White House while their father was president (or spent
significant time there). The earliest president the dataset would allow me to look at was Grover Cleveland, who was
president from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. The most recent president I looked at was Barack Obama, who was
president from 2009-2017. A selection of the results are below.
Using R, the dataset was filtered first by name, then by year and sex (for all names except Malia, which had no
males). The data was then grouped together and plotted. For some of the visualizations, the exact years could not
be used when coding the annotations due to the placement of the lines. The visualizations display the popularity of
the names for the five years before their father was elected to five years after (or, in the Obama's case, as far
forward as the dataset goes).
> SashaMalia <- babynames %>% filter (sex == "F", name %in% c("Sasha", "Malia"))
> subset(SashaMalia, year %in% 2004:2014) -> SashaMaliaLate
> Obamas <- ggplot(SashaMaliaLate, aes(x = year, y = prop, color = name)) + geom_line()
> Obamas + annotate("text", x = 2009, y = .00085, label = "Obama became president")
The result:
Jenna Bush
> BushJenna <- ggplot(JennaLate, aes(x = year, y = prop, color = name)) + geom_line()
> BushJenna + annotate("text", x = 1998.7, y = .0029, label = "Bush became president") + annotate("text", x = 2001.6, y = .00285, label = "9/11") + annotate("text", x = 2009, y =
.0011, label = "Bush left office")
The result:
Chelsea Clinton
> Clinton <- ggplot(ChelseaLate, aes(x = year, y = prop, color = name)) + geom_line()
> Clinton + annotate("text", x = 1992, y = .0083, label = "Clinton became president") + annotate("text", x = 2000, y = .0015, label = "Clinton left office")
The result:
This visualization looks at two of the three Kennedy children, Caroline and
Patrick. John F. Kennedy became president in January 1961, following his
victory in November 1960. Patrick, the younger of the two displayed, was
born prematurely in August 1963 and died at two days old. His father, John F.
Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, just three months later in
November 1963. There is a visible spike in the appearance of the name
Patrick following both his father’s assassination and his birth and death,
presumably to honor both of them. There is also a rise in the popularity of
Caroline following her father's assassination, although it is not nearly as
pronounced as Patrick. It appears Patrick was a much more common name at
the time than Caroline, his older sister (and only living child of JFK and Jackie;
middle brother John, known as John-John as a child, was killed in a plane
crash in 1999). I chose to exclude John because it was the name of the
president as well, which skewed the data; the same thing happened with the
Roosevelt’s, who named their first son Theodore. However, five years after
their father was assassinated, both names remained more popular than they
were five years prior to his presidency. To get both names on the plot, I used
Top: JFK with Caroline, 1960
the ‘merge’ function, allowing me to combine two names of opposite genders. Bottom: 1963
> Caroline <- babynames %>% filter (sex == "F", name %in% c("Caroline"))
> subset(Caroline, year %in% 1955:1968) -> CarolineLate
> Patrick <- babynames %>% filter (sex == "M", name %in% c("Patrick"))
> Patrick <- Patrick %>% arrange(prop)
> subset(Patrick, year %in% 1955:1968) -> PatrickLate
The result:
Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
> Calvin <- babynames %>% filter (sex == "M", name %in% c("Calvin"))
> subset(Calvin, year %in% 1918:1934) -> CalvinLate
> CoolidgeAnnotate <- ggplot(CalvinLate, aes(x = year, y = prop, color = name)) + geom_line()
> CoolidgeAnnotate + annotate("text", x = 1924, y = .0043, label = "Calvin (Jr.)'s death") + annotate("text", x = 1929, y = .002, label = "Coolidge left office") + annotate("text", x =
1921.5, y = .003, label = "Coolidge became president")
The result:
Roosevelt Children
> RooseveltsM <- babynames %>% filter (sex == "M", name %in% c("Ted", "Kermit", "Archie", "Quentin"))
> subset(RooseveltsM, year %in% 1896:1914) -> RooseveltsMLate
The result:
Overall Findings
Overall, it appears that the names of presidential children peak shortly after they are inaugurated, or, as in the case
of JFK’s children, when there are major events pertaining personally to the president. After the first year, the names
drop, and continue to do so, in many cases past the time of the president leaving office. It was interesting to see
that in most cases, and all of those seen here, the names were less popular before the presidency as well. This
would be expected with less popular names like Malia or Sasha, but to see it for common names like Jenna or
Chelsea was noteworthy. Going off that, it appears that regardless of the popularity of a name prior to the election
and inauguration, the presidency impacts the popularity of the names of his children. Further research doing a more
in-depth comparison of the name popularity with the president's approval rating would be interesting.