Popularity Distribution of Given Names
The popularity (frequency) distribution of given names typically follows a power law distribution.
Since about 1800 in England and Wales and in the U.S., the popularity distribution of given names has been shifting so that the most popular names are losing popularity. For example, in England and Wales, the most popular female and male names given to babies born in 1800 were Mary and John, with 24% of female babies and 22% of male babies receiving those names, respectively. In contrast, the corresponding statistics for in England and Wales in 1994 were Emily and James, with 3% and 4% of names, respectively. Not only have Mary and John gone out of favor in the English speaking world, also the overall distribution of names has changed significantly over the last 100 years for females, but not for males. This has led to an increasing amount of diversity for female names.
Read more about this topic: Italian Given Names
Other articles related to "popularity distribution of given names, names":
... In some cultures, twins may be given distinctive pairs of names ... Twin names are sometimes similar in sound, for example boy/girl twins named Christian and Christina, or twin girls named Sudha and Subha in India, or Ojor and Omon in Nigeria ... The names may have a thematic similarity such as Jesse (or Jessica) and James (after the American outlaw Jesse James), or Matthew and Mark (the first two ...
Famous quotes containing the words names, popularity and/or distribution:
“A knowledge that people live close by is,
I think, enough. And even if only first names are ever exchanged
The people who own them seem rock-true and marvelously self-sufficient.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)