Nametrix Baby Name App Review – review of the baby name smartphone app, Nametrix and an interview with the creator of Nametrix, Mark Edmond.
There’s a new baby name app that takes the fun of researching baby names to a new level. Nametrix is an app for iPhones and iPads that researches thousands of baby names and profiles the name for future occupations and other personal traits. For example, according to Nametrix, it turns out that Ellen is a disproportionately common name for 1) psychotherapists, 2) librarians, 3) activists.
Nametrix baby name app is extremely addicting and features so many baby names (both common and unique). Nametrix tells you how popular a name is and ranks which geographical part of the country the most popular baby names hail from. Nametrix even lists the peak year for popularity of particular names. Can Nametrix help you predict the future occupation of your future son or daughter? Who knows? Either way – Nametrix is a lot of fun and another tool to use when researching baby names.
I had a chance to interview the Nametrix baby name app creator Mark Edmond.
Lisa LaGrou of Oakland County Moms – So, basically you can plug in a perspective name you’re thinking about for a baby and it will give you an informative, entertaining profile description based on scientific and anecdotal research?
Mark Edmond, Creator Nametrix Baby Name Research App – It’s actually entirely data-driven. The data comes from the census, Wikipedia, and the a US campaign contribution database — millions of people altogether. The app performs statistical analysis on the data and shows you some really interesting stuff. For example, artist is the #1 profession for women named Elise, who also tend to be Democrats. A higher percentage of men named Trey are guitarists than with any other name.
Lisa LaGrou of Oakland County Moms – If I wanted my future son to be a future NFL quarterback, which name would I shoot for?
Mark Edmond, Creator Nametrix Baby Name Research App – Some of the top names for football players are Lamar, Terrell, Donovan, Dexter, and Charley. Clearly, some of those were popular among football players early last century, so you might need to go with one of the more modern ones. Believe it or not, Elvis is #17 in the list given that there are 5 of them (Akpla, Dumervil, Grbac,Patterson, Peacock), which is a relatively high percentage of all Elvises.
Lisa LaGrou of Oakland County Moms – What if I want my future daughter to be a musician? Do the names on your Nametrix Baby Name App pinpoint gender specific occupations? IE: not all athletes are boys, right?
Mark Edmond, Creator Nametrix Baby Name Research App – The occupation info isn’t gender specific. In fact, if you’ll find quite a few men (e.g., Gene, Ted, Doug) in the “Homemaker” profession, though they’re ranked near the bottom. You’ll generally find a mix of of genders in each profession, such as 6 female and 4 male for the top 10 professor names.
Lisa LaGrou of Oakland County Moms – How did your interest in this start? Did it start in high school by noticing certain amounts of “Chrissys” in school were cheerleaders or jocks were named “Mike” or “Steve”? Something like that?
Mark Edmond, Creator Nametrix Baby Name Research App – I had the idea when I realized that the pile of books and slew of
websites and apps my wife and I had consulted when researching names for our baby didn’t tell us much more than a few basic things, and little of it was based on real life. I had a hunch that certain names might tend to lean one way or another, and that turned out to be true and really fascinating.
Lisa LaGrou of Oakland County Moms – How thorough and extensive is your research that goes behind each name? What’s the process?
Mark Edmond, Creator Nametrix Baby Name Research App – At the heart of the analysis is a statistical technique called
“normalization.” This is what allows you to determine that people named Jackie tend more toward the Comedian profession than Teacher despite the fact that there are far more Jackies who are teachers than comedians. A higher percentage of comedians than teachers are named Jackie, so comedian ranks higher. The rest of the app is driven by similar analysis on real data, and I think it’s quite a solid approach.
Lisa LaGrou of Oakland County Moms – Does your database contain odd or eccentric baby names?
Mark Edmond, Creator Nametrix Baby Name Research App – It sure does, though it does require certain minimums to be met for the name to be included in the app or listed in a given profession. To avoid offending anyone, I’ll leave it to your readers to find some of these names.
Lisa LaGrou of Oakland County Moms – OK, my name is Lisa… Fire away.
Mark Edmond, Creator Nametrix Baby Name Research App – Here’s a short summary for Lisa (you can see much more when using the app):
• Top professions: Set Designer, News Presenter, Human Resources
• Top party: Democrat
• US rank among girls: 685
• US popularity peak: 1965
• Most popular region: The Northeast
You can download the Nametrix name app at iTunes here.
