I don’t know why, but there’s something super fascinating about baby naming trends. Maybe it’s because what we choose to name our children is a reflection of the culture of the time, or maybe it’s because there’s something narcissisticly (I just made that word up, and I’m rather happy with myself) satisfying about seeing if ours made the cut. Whatever the reason, looking back at the most popular baby names year-by-year is a unique form of entertainment I simply cannot get enough of.

Thankfully, the United States Social Security Administration has compiled the most popular baby names from the past 100 years, and let’s just say if your name is Mary or Michael, you’re the real MVP.

Visitors to the site have several options for viewing popular baby names. To see the five most popular each year of the last 100 (and more specifically, the most popular the year you were born), you can take a look at their Top Five Names for Births in 1920-2019 chart here.

Perhaps you’re more interested in seeing a longer list. The Most Popular Baby Names by Decade chart, which you can view here, contains the top 200 most popular names of each period. For example, here’s a snippet of the 1980s chart.

Or maybe you’re feeling like getting all sorts of crazy and want to see what the most popular baby names were the year you were born IN YOUR STATE. Yep. There’s a chart for that, and it yields 100 results per state and year. You can view it here. Take a look at this example of a state and year search for Alabama in 1990:

Throwing all caution to the wind about revealing my age, I’m going to go ahead and tell everyone that 1980 was my year and I was actually quite shocked by the results each of the name charts yielded.

First of all, I was a little disappointed, though not at all surprised, that my name did not make the top 5 of the year, or even the top 20 of the decade, despite having gone to school with quite a few other young women who shared the same name. Perhaps most shocking of all, though, was that neither the name Megan nor the name Kristen (or Christy, Kristy, Kristi, etc.) made the top 5 of any list I searched.

I mean, I swear to God EVERYBODY’S name was Megan or some derivative of Kristen when I was growing up. I had multiple friends who shared these same names, but not a single friend named Jessica or Melissa. Yet those made the cut. Baffling, I tell you.

What’s not baffling, though, is the popularity of Jennifer and Mary. Those names had staying power and a good run for several decades each. I imagine that’s what people born in the 2010s are going to be saying about Emma and Olivia. Turn a corner in a few years and you’re bound to run into somebody with one of those names. Bonus points if both names combine to make their first and middle. You know there are kids out there whose names do.

So if you’re looking for a little mindless yet undoubtedly interesting entertainment, buckle up and prepare to name dive. Just remember to let the dog out and feed the kids at some point today.