Say it ain't so, Jose*

Rico says the post title is a multi-lingual pun on the famous Shoeless Joe Jackson line, but Sam Roberts has the real story in The New York Times:

The most popular Hispanic name for baby boys since the Social Security Administration began counting has fallen from the Top Fifty list. Even in Texas, where Jose has been Number One among all newborns since 1996, it was bumped to second place last year by Jacob.
Because this happened when birthrates for Hispanic-Americans were among the highest of any ethnic or racial group, the rankings just might be a measure of assimilation, said Professor Cleveland Kent Evans, who teaches psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska and wrote The Great Big Book of Baby Names. “This is probably a combination of assimilation and the drop in immigration from Latin America as a result of the recession,” Professor Evans said. “However, it is probable that names are also becoming more varied in Latin American culture itself, as this is a phenomenon in most of the modern world.”
Jose has been in the Top Fifty every year except one since 1972, though it has been declining in popularity (it ranked 28th in 2004, 43rd in 2009 and 51st in 2010). Nationwide, the most popular name for baby boys was Jacob, which has ranked first since 1999, and for girls, Isabella, which edged Emma for first place in 2009.
Two Hispanic names (Garcia and Rodriguez) made the Top Ten list of surnames in 2000 for the first time, and the popularity of Isabella this year might suggest that acculturation works both ways, changing “the nature of U.S. culture to a certain extent,” said Professor Alberto Moreiras, head of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. “As it happens everywhere, name preference goes through cycles, and the name Jose has been overused over the last twenty years or so, and there are too many Joses.”
Fewer Joses were born last year, though, (7,656 of them) than in any year since 1978.
What are parents who in the past might have named their sons Jose naming their sons today?
Not Angel, Juan, Luis, Diego, or Jesus. They, too, remain among the hundred most popular boys’ names, but collectively, the number of babies with those names also declined in 2010 compared with the year before. Not Fernando or Jorge, either. (Angel ranked 42nd last year compared with 37th the year before.)
Experts caution against assuming assimilation as a given. “Jonathan is a very popular name among the low-income groups in Argentina,” said Prof. Javier Auyero, a sociologist at the University of Texas, Austin. “That doesn’t mean they are Americanized.”