J is for June

or How I Spent an Afternoon Jumping around on the Internet Trying to Get something for a J Post. 

You may know that my blog alias is June, after June Cleaver from the TV show, Leave It to Beaver. In fact, my blog family all have aliases from the Cleaver family. Ward is my husband, and my two sons are Wally and Theodore (Theo, for short), Beavers's real name. However, I've used their alternate names so much that I sometimes call them that in real life. 

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to see if I could find any real-life June Cleavers. This idea was spurred by the release of the 1950s census data by the US government on April 1st. However, while the data may have been released, it's not available yet on Heritage Quest or Ancestry, where it will be easily searchable. But I did find data for 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses. As it turns out, there weren't that many June Cleaver's out there; in fact, not more than a couple of handfuls over the years. And none of them lived in Mayfield, where the Cleaver family of TV fame resided. :)

So instead, I used Social Security records to look at popular baby names through the years to see how popular the name June has been. As it turns out, June never made it into the top 20. The name was in its heyday in the 1930s when it was ranked in the mid-40s in popularity. What I consider old fashion names, such as Hazel and Mabel, are making a resurgence these days, but June has not caught on that way. 

So when June didn't provide much data, I started looking at any names using the Social Security website starting with J. And do you know what I figured out? There are many more popular boy names that start with J than there are girl names. In the top 20, James and John have been popular for decades, along with Joseph, Jeffery, Jon, Jack, Jay, Jim, Jimmy, Joe, Jason, Joshua, Jonathan, Jason, Justin, Jacob, and Jackson.

When I examined the same time, 1950-2020, I found fewer girl names starting with J in the top 20. In fact, none showed up until 1970, when Jennifer was on the list along with Jessica, and those remained popular for the next 30 years. However, in the 21st century, no J female names have been in the top 20. 

BTW, when I checked out the popularity of my real name, it was less popular than June, never making it into the top 100 and sometimes not even making it into the top 1000. 

Do you have a popular name? What do you think about it?