Currently playing on my computer (tune in: pls, asx)
     
 
Mon, 06 Mar 2006

Baby Name Libraries
I scraped a few sites to build my baby name library, including the Social Security Administration. Direct downloadable copies of the "basic" versions of my boy and girl name libraries are available:

:: Posted by rus on Mon, 06 Mar 2006 11:35 pm
:: Filed under /contrib/babynames


Baby Name Regex Search
As I mentioned previously, we are expecting another girl. Furthermore, our previous name of choice ("Olivia") is a very common one (at least going back for the past 5 years). So Kristy and I hunkered down around the computer and tried to find a good alternative to "Olivia".

While looking, I decided that the search interface at many of the baby name sites was just too limiting. For example, we like the nickname "Liv" but it is pretty hard to search for all names that have "liv" somewhere in the beginning, middle, or end of the name. Enter perl (see perl, see perl run, run perl run!).

Using a small script, I scraped a bunch of names off of a few web sites that seem to have a fairly comprehensive list. Using those names, I built a small local library for my own personal use. Then I authored a very simple interface to search the library using any (well... most any) regular expression. It makes baby name searching that much more fun! Here's the link:

So if I punch in 'liv' and search (on the extended lib), I get a small set of alternatives to Olivia. I did a bunch of other regex searches. For example, the regex "^(a|e|i|o|u)[a-z]{4}(a|e|i|o|u)$" will yield all six letter names that begin and end with a vowel. If you aren't familiar with regular expressions, here are some other examples:

    RegexFunctional Meaning
    ^zstarts with 'z'
    a$ends with 'a'
    ^z.*a$starts with 'z' and ends with 'a'
    ^e.*ana$starts with 'e' and ends with 'ana'
    ^[a-z]{3,4}$ all 3-letter and 4-letter names

The links provided by the search utility go to a handy little site that provides the meaning, origin, and relative popularity of the name.

(Update Mon Mar 13 14:34:22 PST 2006 // fixed an html problemo)

:: Posted by rus on Mon, 06 Mar 2006 11:16 pm
:: Filed under /daily_journal/2006, /contrib/babynames



        

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