Make It Make Toonies · Instrument No. 3

What Ontario Wanted

Every name carries a wish. Each of Ontario's children was given one of nine — strength, faith, beauty, and the rest — and the register records how those wishes changed across a century.

Each panel is one meaning's share of all tagged births, 1917 to 2024. A name can carry more than one wish, so the panels don't sum to a whole — read each on its own terms. Drag the year to read any point.

2024

Source: Office of the Registrar General, Ontario, Baby Names, 1917–2024, via the Ontario Data Catalogue (Open Government Licence – Ontario), joined to a connotation register in which every name is tagged with one to three of nine meaning categories and a short origin gloss. Categories are read as understood today — Shirley reads as vintage now and read as glamour in 1936, and one tagging cannot be both. Shares are of births whose names are tagged (effectively all births at the ≥5 threshold). Part of the Make It Make Toonies register.