The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager

You can call me Al

If you’ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you betty
And betty when you call me
You can call me al
-Paul Simon

The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager is an interactive portrait of America's name choices. Start with a "sea" of nearly 5000 names. Type a letter, and you'll zoom in to focus on how that initial has been used over the past century. Then type a few more letters, or a name. Each stripe is a timeline of one name, its width reflecting the name's changing popularity. If a name intrigues you, click on its stripe for a closer look.

When you're done playing, visit the creative author of The Baby Name Wizard - Laura Wattenberg's blog where you can find out:

• Do celebrities really influence baby names?
• Introducing the Hottest Name in America
• True Names, Stranger than Fiction