More First Names

I wrote yesterday about the incoming UGA freshman class and the most popular first names. This is Part II in which I provide the data of the top five names since 2008. See the table below. A few years have ties for a spot.

	08	09	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17
1	Sarah	Sarah	Emily	Emily	Sarah	Emily	Emily	Emily & John	William	William
2	Emily	William	Elizabeth	John	Emily	Sarah	Sarah		Emily	Sarah
3	Lauren	Emily	Michael	Sarah	John	John	John	Hannah	Sarah	Madison
4	William	Elizabeth	Taylor	Andrew	William	Anna	William	William	Caroline	Emily
5	Michael	John	William	Michael	Rachel	Hannah	Rachel	Anna & Caroline	John	Caroline

As you can see, for a long time Emily and Sarah dominated and even in 2017 they're in the top five, but William stepped up. Why is that? Good question, as UGA tends to have more female than male students. Keep in mind the differences in raw numbers are slight. See below for the top five in 2017 and the numbers of students who share that first name.

1. William (67)
2. Sarah (64)
3. Madison (59)
4. Emily (57)
5. Caroline (56)

Think about those numbers above, as they're out of 5,482 or so freshman in this year's class. So all it takes is a statistical quirk of a few more students who share a name to bump it up the list. You really can't make too much out of this, though that doesn't stop me from trying every year, just for fun.