Find out how your name ranks over at The Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager. “Garry” was a big hit in the ’50s, how appropriate.
In February 2005, IBM researcher Martin Wattenberg created a Web-based visualization applet, the NameVoyager, to help call attention to his wife’s first book, The Baby Name Wizard, a guide to American baby names. This effort to support his wife’s project swept the Web and became a hot topic of conversation – for those searching for the perfect baby name and for others. Without any advertising, the applet drew more than 500,000 site visits in its first two weeks. It has been downloaded more than 900,000 times as of mid-April. Also in April, Google found more than 11,000 references to the NameVoyager.