Phyllis

A parable (fable?—oh, words, terms, nomenclature, I know not how to use you), if you will:

The other day I remarked to myself, Huh! I sure seem to know a lot of Baby -isses. There's that Iris that I met, and that Alice, and that other Alice. This is, I think, a Thing.

So I got to thinking, based on all this evidence I had at my disposal: Whither the baby Phyllises?

Especially, I mean, given that there are almost certainly a large number of baby Felices.

When it came time to write this post, though, I thought I ought to confirm my hunches with a splash of data. Alice—this I knew was a modestly popular name, and one whose popularity was rising. Iris, too. But I looked 'em up anyway. Alice: #127 in 2012, up from #142 last year; Iris: #282 in 2012, up from #303 last year. Phyllis, meanwhile, did not appear in the top 1000 names last year. Hoo boy, I wagered, am I on to something! 

But then—then—I looked up Felice, and was surprised to discover that it, too, did not appear in the top 1000 names last year. In fact, when I dug deeper, I learned something that shook me to my core: there were only nine Felices born in 2012. And there were twelve—twelve—Phyllises.

Moral: Leave anecdotal evidence to the pros (like your friend who swears their aunt once taught a girl named Tampon).

Postscript: Let's put things in perspective. It's really not as if either Iris or Alice is wildly popular. I just happen to know three babies with one of those two names. There were 1,122 Irises born in 2012 (0.06% of all baby girls born that year) and 2,480 Alices (zero-point-thirteen-percent). In other words, give me 10,000 American girls between the ages of six and eighteen months, and maybe nineteen of them will be named either Iris or Alice.