Erie Ranks Top 10 Baby Names by Car Crashes and Thefts

Parents choose baby names in all sorts of ways, from the conventional — like naming a child after a beloved relative—to the decidedly unconventional, like posting names on a white board outside the delivery room and asking nurses and passersby to vote on their favorite. Chances are no one chooses their child’s name based on how many people with that name get into car crashes or have their cars stolen.

But in the tongue-in-cheek spirit of giving parents-to-be one more thing to consider, Erie Insurance compared the Social Security Administration’s annual list of the most popular baby names with its claims data to rank which names have the most car crashes and which names’ cars are stolen the most.

“Of course we don’t think parents should use this information when choosing a name because a person’s name has no bearing whatsoever on anything related to their insurance,” said Matt Myers, senior vice president of claims, Erie Insurance. “But people are fascinated by baby names, and as a car insurance provider we have claims data that can be correlated to names. We thought we’d share the information knowing that people will find it interesting.” Myers joked that his own daughter didn’t consult him before choosing the name Eleanor for his newborn second grandchild (which ranks 320th for crashes).

Below and in this infographic are the 10 most popular boy and girl names and each name’s rank according to car crashes and thefts.

To arrive at the rankings, Erie Insurance calculated the number of theft and car accident claims filed by its policyholders between January 1994 and March 2014.

Source: Erie Insurance