There are many sobering moments that happen around the birth of a child. One involves a blank space on a government form unsentimentally titled Statement of Live Birth.

Being allowed to name another human being is a weighty thing. Some parents have had the name chosen for months, while others leave it to the last minute. Some make their choice and hold fast to it, while others have fun changing their minds. Some reach into tradition to make a choice, while others look to pop culture or their own imaginations.

A close look at the names Ontario babies are given shows that geography matters as well: for both boys and girls, different names have strikingly different patterns across neighbourhoods and communities.

FROM A NAME ON A FORM, TO NAMES ON A MAP

At OpenFile’s request, Ontario’s Registrar General crunched five years of birth registration data, covering 823,000 children born between 2005 and mid-December 2009. The data provided shows the top five baby names for boys and girls by postal forward sortation area—or FSA, the first three characters of a postal code—so long as the total number of babies with that name was ten or more. (The Office of the Registrar General cited privacy concerns for not revealing more detail.)

Then, we mapped them all, for the GTA, for Ottawa, and for Hamilton-Niagara. For each city, we created one master map, as well as maps of individual baby names that were especially popular or otherwise interesting in each region. (Hamilton and Ottawa, it turns out, are more similar to each other than either is to the GTA.)

Most mapped FSAs have five names for boys and five for girls. Some have fewer than five boys' or girls' names, and some have none of either. The areas with no data—marked "Data not available" on the map—are either non-residential or low-population areas, or simply had no names popular enough to have been picked ten or more times by parents.

WHERE'S IN A NAME?

In Toronto, some names, we learned, are suburban. The name Ethan, for example, clusters in the outer 905, and appears in the outlying areas in Ottawa and Hamilton's maps, as well. Ava and Olivia are the equivalent for girls, with strong concentrations in York, Durham, and Peel, but much less presence in the 416. Joshua is also more common in the suburbs.

Some boys’ names, on the other hand, cluster downtown. William and Alexander are concentrated in the older parts of Toronto. Benjamin also has a strong presence in the former City of Toronto, especially the east end.

Other names appear in distinct pockets. Tenzin, for example, is only seen in any significant number in Parkdale, where it is the top name for boys and girls—for reasons we'll explain shortly. Girls named Gurleen are strongly concentrated in three neighbourhoods in Brampton. The name Chloe is most popular in Markham, with some across Highway 404 in Richmond Hill, and south of Steeles into northwest Scarborough. Fatima is found most in mid-Scarborough north of Lawrence, in Thorncliffe Park, and in Malton. Isabella appears in a strong belt running north through the west end of the old city and up into Woodbridge, Richmond Hill, and Bolton. Muhammads have three distinct clusters: east from Flemingdon Park along the east Danforth, then northeast through Scarborough, with a pocket in Markham; Malton and Rexdale; and a strip of Mississauga between Burnhamthorpe and the QEW.

YOUR TURN

In each city, we're also inviting you, our readers, to tell us your baby name story. What went into the name you chose for your child? What went into the name your parents chose for you? Tell us. Or, if you'd rather start exploring the baby names in your city and your neighbourhood right away, you can do that, too.

Photo, of Brampton-born Olivia Tsafkopoulos, by Sheryl Nadler/OpenFile.