The use of the most common weaver genera has changed dramatically over 200 years. The Google Books Ngram Viewer charts the yearly count of selected n-grams (letter combinations)[n] or words and phrases, as found in over 5.2 million books digitized by Google Inc (up to 2008).

The 3 most common genera in the weaver family are Ploceus, Euplectes, and Quelea and the n-gram for these 3 words is shown below. The early increases of the use of the genera relates to the discovery of new species. The term Ploceus decreased during the 1870s and remained relatively low for a long time due to the sub-divison of this genus into many others, e.g. Hyphantornis. The rise of popular bird books from the 1940s resulted in a general relative increase in all 3 genera in books.

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