Popular Name?

Last weekend, Evelyn went to a birthday party. There were about 20 kids at the shin-dig. I was surprised that another girl was named Evelyn. This afternoon we girls went to the mall for some shopping and playing. While in the kids' play area, I overheard another mom call to her daughter, "Evelyn!"

Back when Troy and I chose Evelyn's name, we were certain of two things: (1) We wanted a name that wasn't very popular; (2) The baby's middle name would be Lucille. Evelyn worked perfectly. It paired up with Lucille nicely, and it was ranked 88th on the 2003 Social Security list of baby names.

After the two episodes mentioned above, I got curious enough to look up the popularity of Evelyn's name since 2003. Here are the years and the popularity ranks:
2004 - 84th
2005 - 71st
2006 - 65th
2007 - 55th
2008 - 54th
I guess it's no wonder I've been hearing Evelyn's name more often. (In 2001, her name wasn't even in the top 100.)

I won't completely omit Julia from this post. Julia's name was ranked 40th in 2008. The popularity of her name actually went down last year. It had been holding strong in the 30's for the past decade.