If You're Turning 50 This Year, the Odds Say You're Sharing More Than the Birthday

A trio of names dominated birth certificates across the country throughout the 1970s, and anyone marking a 50th birthday this season has a real chance of carrying one of them. It's the sort of fact that tends to surface at the kind of dinner where the conversation drifts to childhood classrooms, and someone realizes three other people at the table answered to the same name growing up. The rankings have moved considerably since, as any recent birth announcement makes plain. For a certain generation, though, the field of choices was once far narrower than it is today.

With reporting from The Hill.