Everyone Named Their Kid After Maradona During The 1986 World Cup

Diego Maradona in 1986 was essentially an archangel, razing down everything but Argentina on the way to winning the World Cup. This sparked any number of legacies, from a merchandising empire based chiefly on t-shirts with his and Che Guerva's face on them, to, it seems, thousands and thousands of kids named Diego.

Facebook Data Science poked around, and during the later stages of the '86 World Cup, the popularity of the name Diego surged to more than 5.5 percent of all baby boys, up from 1 to 1.5 percent. This spike is preposterous, and means that about 1 in 25 boys born that week would have been named something else under normal circumstances, but were instead named after Maradona.

While the effect isn't as big, the name also had a surge in popularity in Brazil over the same time, which is maybe even more impressive:

[ Facebook Data Science]