More on Data and Supreme Court Justice names

In 2012, this blog discussed the popularity of the names of the Supreme Court Justices at the time.  With several new members on the Court since then, it's time for an update.

The following charts (prepared by author) show the popularity (by rank) of the first name of each Justice in the year of their birth and in 2019, based on data from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Source for birth years is Supreme Court's About the Court page. 

Popularity of Justices' first names in years born

Popularity of Justices' first names in 2019

As with any dataset, it's interesting to see what patterns the data indicate:

• Everyone's name was in the mainstream in the year they were born.
• Only "Samuel" and "Elena" are more popular now than they were when the Justices were born.
  

Understanding the data is also critical.

• Does the highly ranked "John" include variations such as "Johnny"?
• No. In the SSA data, "John" and "Johnny" are each ranked separately as different names. "Jon," "Johnnie," and "Johnie" are also each ranked separately as different names. For that reason, babycenter.com's list of most popular baby names combines spellings of similar names to reveal their "true popularity."
  
  
• Do the name rankings reflect gender classifications?
• Yes. The SSA data separates "male names" for those assigned or designated as male at birth and "female names" for those assigned or designated as female at birth in Social Security applications. For example, in 1972, "Amy" as a male name was ranked 952 and "Amy" as a female name was ranked 5.
  
  
• How does the SSA collect this data?
• The SSA explains the source of the data as follows: "All names are from Social Security card applications for births that occurred in the United States after 1879. Note that many people born before 1937 never applied for a Social Security card, so their names are not included in our data. For others who did apply, our records may not show the place of birth, and again their names are not included in our data. All data are from a 100% sample of our records on Social Security card applications as of March 2020."
  
  
• How does the SSA rank the names? 
• The SSA rankings for each year are based on the frequency of the male name or female name.  If two names have the same frequency, the SSA explains that the names are ranked in alphabetical order.  For example, in 2019, both "Alberto" and "Neil" had a frequency of 422, so "Alberto" received a rank of 635 and "Neil" received a rank of 636.

Here are some resources for understanding data:

• Data & Statistics Research Guide (University of Washington Libraries)
  
• Data Literacy Research Guide (Rutgers University Libraries)
• Data Feminism (2020) (open access book)
  
• Data Literacy Guidance for Law Firms, The Legal Toolkit Podcast (2019)
  
• Why Data Literacy Matters, The Legal Toolkit Podcast (2019)
• Data Literacy in the Real World (2017)
• Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data (2013) (ebook version)
  

Names can be powerful.  Here are some articles that discuss various implications of names:

• Why You Should Be Proud of Your Ethnic Name (2021) 
• Top 100 Most Common Last Names in the United States (2020)
  
• People Will Judge You Based on Your Name (2019)
• Female Lawyers with Masculine Names May Have a Better Shot at Judgeships (2009)
• If you have the power to name, how do you use it?  The Bias Hiding in Your Library (2019) (discussing names that are assigned as subject headings in libraries)
  

Finally, for a fascinating look at how data and the law can intersect, see Making the Law Computable (2019) for a discussion of the Harvard Caselaw Access Project.