jacob Posts

Over on Eileen Flanagan's Imperfect Serenity, there's an interesting post on blog publicity, "Blogging dilemmas," inspired in part by Robin M"'s recent "How did you get here?" post. Both bring up interesting questions about the role of blogs in community building and the location of that line that separates good blogging from mere self-promotion and pandering.

Readers will probably be unsurprised to learn that I use Technorati, Google Blog Search, etc., every day to keep track of the Quaker blogosphere. I act as a kind of community organizer and my searches are for interesting posts talking about Quakers (until reading Eileen's post I hadn't check my Technorati "rank" in months). Many people's first introduction to QuakerQuaker.org is getting linked from it, and I suspect I've accidentally outed a few beginning bloggers who hadn't told anyone of their new blog!

I have a professional blog on web design and analytics (with a somewhat off-topic but satisfying post on top at the moment) and separating that out has allowed me to use this personal blog, QuakerRanter, for whatever I like. Most regularly readers would say it focuses on Quakerism and cute kid pictures and while those are the most common posts, the most read posts are the minor fascinations I indulge myself with occasionally. Quaker plain dress is something I practice but don't think about most of the time (806 readers in past month). My wife and I love to bust on bad baby names and unfairly unpopular baby names (627 visits). I've also detailed some outings to semi-legendary South Jersey haunts (317) and score high on searches to them.

The conventional wisdom of the blog-as-publicity tool crowd would probably say these off-topic posts are distracting my core audience. Perhaps, but they're infrequent on the blog and long-lived on Google. Besides, I think it helps people to know I'm not just obsessed with one topic. Being a part of a real community means knowing each other in all of our quirks. I'm more tender and forgiving of other Quaker bloggers when I know more of their story: it puts what they say into a context that makes it sound more lived, less ideological. There's certainly good reasons for tightly-focused professional blogs (I'd drop Techcrunch from my blogroll if they started posting kids pictures!), but as more people read posts through feeds and aggregators I wonder if there's going to be as much pressure for personal, community-oriented blogs to be as single-minded in their focus.

We all have diverse, quirky interests so why not indulge them? I have seen blogs that try too hard to pander to particular audiences and boy, are they boring! A certain degree of idiosyncrasy and subjective orneriness is probably essential. Personality is at least as important as focus.

PS: I'm also interested in making sure I don't loose the core audience with all my side trips, hence the "latest Quaker posts" at the top of the page. I have at least one request for a Quaker-only RSS feed and will eventually get that going.
PPS: As if on queue, the next post in Google Reader after Eileen's is Avinish Kaushik's Blog Metrics: Six recommendations for measuring your success. Parts of it are probably a bit technical for most QR readers but it's useful for thinking about blogs as outreach.

For those keeping track of such things, the 2005 baby name stats are up on the Social Security website. Francis dropped two places in the rankings and now sits as the 527th most popular newborn boy's name in America, while Theodore crept up slightly to close at 305. Both names are still far from trendy. The big winner according to the New York Times is Nevaeh, a girls name made up of heaven spelt backwards; in only a few years it's come from nowhere to take slot 70 for the girls.

How to tell if your child is obsessive-compulsive:

Theo is very precise about lining his toy cars up just so on the windowsill. This is the window that looks out into the street, which means his car parking is routinely interrupted by his shouts of "V! V!" (S.U.V.) and "uh-uh-Ss pup" (U.P.S. truck).

We've had a couple of visits lately:

That's my high school friend Rui with Francis; Rui's daughter Kia holding Francis while Jorge and Ann look on; a week later Jorj read to Theo and his own son Jacob while Sue talks with Julie (unseen) in the kitchen. Earlier in the day Jorj pointed his camera back on us.

Here's Theo learning how to ride his own bike (courtesy the townwide yard sale earlier this month) and Francis with a sleep smile and grimace:

Update, 10/18: Today was Theo's first day of preschool. Here's the photoset

Over at the BarclayPress site there are a number of great articles on emergent church from the perspective of Evangelical Friends

My wife has now finished the first trimester of her pregnancy so we can let people know that our little Theo's going to be a big brother this fall. That means it's time to think of baby names.

Fallen Baby Names List Name Rank: 1900 Rank: 2003 Drop Name Rank: 1900 Rank: 2003 Drop 1 Herbert 32 962 930 1 Edna 17 986 969 2 Herman 45 974 929 2 Louise 24 977 953 3 Floyd 50 964 914 3 Beatrice 44 982 938 4 J 35 920 885 4 Bertha 26 963 937 5 Fred 19 876 857 5 Gladys 15 945 930 6 Earl 27 882 855 6 Lucille 49 954 905 7 Clarence 18 717 699 7 Dorothy 7 846 839 8 Howard 30 721 691 8 Hazel 20 681 661 9 Alfred 33 683 650 9 Edith 25 683 658 10 Ralph 23 660 637 10 Frances 16 580 564 11 Elmer 36 654 618 11 Irene 21 581 560 12 Harold 15 595 580 12 Marie 8 496 488 13 Ernest 26 599 573 13 Martha 31 487 456 14 Eugene 49 578 529 14 Alice 10 426 416 15 Leonard 48 571 523 15 Helen 2 389 387 16 Harry 13 517 504 16 Ruth 5 350 345 17 Francis 37 509 472 17 Rose 14 358 344 18 Willie 28 454 426 18 Annie 28 339 311 19 Roy 24 433 409 19 Clara 23 295 272 20 Walter 11 356 345 20 Esther 30 297 267 21 Arthur 14 353 339 21 Josephine 33 260 227 22 Carl 20 357 337 22 Eva 39 215 176 23 Lawrence 34 344 310 23 Ruby 42 197 155 24 Albert 16 311 295 24 Margaret 3 130 127 25 Joe 38 321 283 25 Catherine 19 106 87 26 Theodore 42 313 271 26 Laura 50 122 72 27 Louis 21 278 257 27 Mary 1 61 60 28 Leo 44 288 244 28 Evelyn 34 89 55 29 Frank 8 228 220 29 Anna 4 21 17 30 Raymond 22 188 166 30 Elizabeth 6 9 3 31 George 4 137 133 31 Mildred 9 n/a 0 32 Edward 9 128 119 32 Florence 11 n/a 0 33 Paul 17 124 107 33 Ethel 12 n/a 0 34 Henry 10 116 106 34 Lillian 13 n/a 0 35 Peter 46 148 102 35 Gertrude 22 n/a 0 36 Kenneth 47 109 62 36 Mabel 27 n/a 0 37 Richard 25 86 61 37 Bessie 32 n/a 0 38 Charles 6 59 53 38 Elsie 35 n/a 0 39 Robert 7 35 28 39 Pearl 36 n/a 0 40 Thomas 12 36 24 40 Agnes 37 n/a 0 41 John 1 17 16 41 Thelma 38 n/a 0 42 James 3 18 15 42 Myrtle 40 n/a 0 43 William 2 11 9 43 Ida 41 n/a 0 44 Jack 41 46 5 44 Minnie 43 n/a 0 45 Joseph 5 6 1 45 Viola 47 n/a 0 46 Samuel 31 23 -8 46 Nellie 48 n/a 0 47 David 29 14 -15 47 Grace 18 13 -5 48 Anthony 43 10 -33 48 Julia 45 33 -12 49 Andrew 40 5 -35 49 Emma 29 2 -27 50 Michael 39 2 -37 50 Sarah 46 12 -34

Most new parents want to give their child unique names and want to steer clear of the most over-used names. Yet if you tell your friends you're naming your boy Jacob or Joshua, they'll all cheer you on. If your little girl goes by Emily, Emma or Madison, they'll think that's darling. Yet those are the top three boy and girl names for 2003.

They are tens of thousands of kids getting these top names every year. All of the kids with these names are going to be getting nicknames to differentiate them from one another: just hope your little angel isn't the one that gets tagged "The Ugly Emily" or "The Stupid Joshua" by their third grade classmates!

There are definite trends in names. Certain names tend to sound fresh and daring even when they're overused and trite. The only way to train your ear away from such trends is to methodically study the data (the New York Times had a fasincating article on all this when we were pondering Theo's name, Where Have All the Lisas Gone?).

Fortunately the U.S. Social Security Administration provides a list of the most popular baby names by year, going back to the turn of the twentieth century. Using this, my wife and I were able to choose "Theodore" for our first child's name; born in 2003, he name is the 313th most popular boy's name and dropping. Yet it's a known name and there have been great twentieth century folks who have answered to it (e.g., Dr. Suess, Theodore Geisel).

How is a parent to choose? One recent afternoon I cut and pasted the top fifty boy and girl names of the first decade of the Twentieth Century. I looked up their current status (the 2003 data) to see what movement has occured in their placement. The old names are still known but some have fallen far out of use. Herbert, for example, was the 32nd most popular boy's name in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, but now ranks a dismal 930! If you want a name everyone knows but no one is giving their kid, Herbert's your choice for boy's and Edna's your choice for girls.

Now these fallen names probably sound awkward. But that's the point: they run counter to the trends. I'll admit that some deserve their reduced status; I cannot imagine saddling a little girl with "Edna." But in the list are some gems which have been unduly demoted by the trend-setters.

We've been very happy with "Theodore," the 26th most fallen name of the Twentieth Century. He's officially named after his great-great uncle. The social security datebase assured us that the name was safe from trendiness.

So what will the new baby be named? Check in soon!! The due date is the end of August.

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Update: drumroll please.... Our new son's name is Francis.

Most parents want their kids to be at least moderately popular. And Baby Theo certainly gets more than his share of ooohs and ahhhs when we troop around with him in public. But it's nice to know that America finds "Theodore" to be increasingly unpopular.