Names and Words

I write period or fantasy works. And that means I have to do a lot of research to make sure the words I'm using are right for the period.

For example I discovered the name Barbara was much more popular in the 1800s and early 1900s than it is now. I also found that the name Jeannette (and not the spelling Jeanette) was also in use. Which is good because I've been using it.

My main tool for this is Google Ngrams where Google digitised thousands of books and let's you find and compare word frequen...