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Tuesday, September 08, 2009

More thoughts on England and Wales Popular Names - Percentages

345, 731 baby girls names were recorded when making the popularity charts for 2008, and 362, 908 baby boys.


The #1 girl name was Olivia, with 5317 births. This accounts for 1.54% of all girl names given.
The #1 boy name was Jack, with 8007 births. This accounts for 2.21% of all boy names given.
The top ten girl names gives 44255 births, and accounts for 12.8% of all girl names given.
The top ten boy names gives 59555 births, and accounts for 16.4% of all boy names given.

If Olivia was in the male top 10 then it would chart at #7. There is also much less diversity in boy names given - 26815 different boy names were registered, while 34043 different female names were registered.

Just comparing with the US, the top names for 2008 -Jacob and Emma accounted for 1.04% and 0.9% of births respectively, and the top 10 boy names only accounts for 8.8% and girl names 7.7%. With boys, this is almost half of those in the UK.

The top 100 girl names account for 47.4% of girl names given, and the top 100 boy names account for 57.7% of boy names given. This certainly isn't the same as it was in the 17th century, with three quarters of boys being named John. But also there seems to be more conservatism in use of names in England and Wales than I expected.

Hurrah - England and Wales stats are back

Here and here.


A few changes from before - they are published by ONS rather than GRO (Office of National Statistics instead of General Register Office, so may differ slightly from before. There is the ONS data from 1998 and 2007 as well, but a gap between '99 and '06.

Jack and Olivia are number one, while Ruby was, according to this data, #1 in 2007. Ffion, Seren and Megan are in the top 10 in Wales. In particular interest are the tables that list most popular names for each month - Holly is #1 in December and Summer is in the top 10 in June, July and August.

Dylan and Rhys are in the top 10 in Wales, a quick glance doesn't reveal any large monthly variations on names given. Regional information is also interesting - Mohammed is #4 in Yorkshire and the Humber, #3 in London and #2 in West Midlands but doesn't appeal at all in the top 10s for E Midlands, N East, E England and S East.

New entries to top 100 include: Lexi (fastest mover), Florence, Emilia, Maryam and Esme, and Blake, Ewan and Zak. Other quick climbers include: Evie (from #15 to #10), Ava (#39 to #21), Summer (#44 to 23), Isla (#65 to 36), Matilda (#62 to 43) and Lacey (#77 to 60), and Oscar (#41 to 30), Riley (#57 to 33), Alex (#58 to 47), Theo (#73 to 58) and Leon (#74 to 62). As ever, there seems to be fewer dramatic changes in the boys list than there is in the girl's list.

Fast fallers include: Amy (#23 to 34), Caitlin (#34 to 44), Georgia (#42 to 52), Madison (#36 to 56), Rebecca (#47 to 64), Maddison (#63 to 74), Skye (#67 to 77), Aimee (#76 to 86) and Courtney (#79 to 98), and Cameron (#34 to 46), Jamie (#36 to 51), Ben (#48 to 57), Kyle (#51 to 69), Kieran (#61 to 73), Aidan (#78 to 92) and Billy (#89 to 98). Is it just me, or is there a Scottish/Irish flavour to these falling names? Callum, Connor, Finlay and Sean have also fallen. But Ryan, Liam and Finley have all risen.

Also interesting are new entries from 1998, names that have become top 100 in 11 years include: Ruby, Evie, Ava (rose 508 places), Summer, Isla (333 places), Scarlett, Eva, Brooke, Matilda, Keira, Lola (322 places), Lilly, Gracie (529 places), Madison, Amelie (2641 places!), Lacey, Sienna (1060 places), Libby, Layla, Maya, Lexi (4917 places!), Maddison, Sofia, Skye, Lexie (4911 places!), Faith, Martha, Eve, Julia, Evelyn, Maria, Tilly, Florence, Emilia, Maryam and Esme.

Jayden, Oscar, Archie, Riley, Lucas, Leo, Finley, Logan, Noah, Mason, Theo, Freddie, Finlay, Harley, Kian (436 places), Hayden, Zachary, Luca, Ashton, Bailey, Sebastian, Gabriel, Evan, Taylor, Reuben, Blake, Louie, Ewan and Zak. There are much fewer dramatic rises for the boys.

Fallen out of the top 100 are: Rose, Victoria, Rachel, Shannon and Madeleine, and Andrew, Frederick and Dominic.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

90s names (US, Australia and Europe)

I wanted to compare certain regions on names - looking at whether they were rising or falling at the same time. I considered using 2000 data - enough time to see sufficient change in the popularity of names, and then realised that the amount of data was so much that I would get lost under it all. So I downscaled, back to 1994, where data is scarcer but trends can still be seen.

So the aim was to see whether various regions, with similar (European) naming cultures, experienced the same popularity of names at the same time, or at least influenced on another, leading to names rising or falling popularity.

The countries I chose (due to there being available data) were UK (England and Wales, at least), USA, France (La cote des prénoms by Besnard), Victoria in Australia, Austria, Denmark and Norway.

I took the top 10 girls names for each region in 1994, except Norway - as it was not available, and France - where I had to take the 1990-4 data, and then compared whether the names were rising or falling in the other regions.

Some notable names:

Amanda - while it was #8 and falling in the USA and had fallen off the popularity charts in UK, it was rising in the other places it appeared - Victoria, Denmark and Norway.

Anna - rising in popularity in USA, Victoria, France and Denmark - though Anna was not in the top n20 in any of these countries. Austria - where Anna was in the top 10, at #8, had Anna falling, as did the UK, where it was #49 - having peaked in 1970s and 80s at #40. In Norway, there was little change in Anna's popularity in the years preceding and succeeding 1994.

Charlotte - peaking in France and Norway, but falling or staying in a stable position everywhere else. It was #4 in UK.

Elizabeth - falling or having little change, #9 in USA.

Emily/Emilie - rising in USA (#3), Denmark and Norway, but little change in UK and Victoria. Emilie was unfashionable in France.

Emma - rising in USA, Victoria, France and Denmark but falling in UK (discussed in previous post about Emma).

Jessica - #1 in USA and Victoria but falling, #3 in UK and rising, unfashionable in France but rising in Austria.

Laura - falling in the English-speaking countries but rising in France, Austria and Denmark.

Lisa - falling for some time in USA, UK and recently in Austria, where it was #2, but rising in France, Victoria and Norway.

Samantha - falling in English-speaking countries and France.

Sarah - falling in USA, UK and Austria, but rising everywhere else. Its lowest numeral position is in UK, where it was #12.

Sophie - rising in USA, UK, Victoria and Austria but falling in France, where it is seen as unfashionable.

Stephanie - falling in all countries where it ranked (not Austria or Norway).

Some themes:
France is generally a little more independent of the other countries included in this study. Julie, Laura, Sarah and Melanie in its top 10 are found in other countries' top 10s, but other names from its 10 - Marine, Camille, Elodie, Marion, Pauline and Anais are not really found elsewhere. Also it bucks the rising trend with Sophie (which is, in essence, a French name!), Jessica and Emilie/y are popular elsewhere but unfashionable in France, and shares peaking Charlotte with Norway. Just looking at the popular names on meilleursprenoms.com for 2006, France still seems to maintain its mix of international and independently French names - international such as Emma, Sarah and Jade, and French names - Lea, Manon, Camille and Oceane.

The English-speaking countries share more names in common than the non-English speaking countries. Especially seen with Laura, Samantha and Sophie. USA and UK tend to have more in common with each other than Victoria, Australia. Share top 10 names Emily and Jessica, and top 20 names Sarah, Samantha, Lauren and Hannah.

Most of the names found from other countries in Norway are rising. Only Cecilie, Christina, Katrine and Elizabeth are falling.