babynames | (no subject)

Historical baby names facts from the UK, for those of you who are interested in changing fashions!

From this site:

13th century names/percentage of women holding that name (based on a sample of 1400 Essex women)/no. babies given that name in 2001:

1 Alice 11/0.7
2 Matilda 10/0.1
3 Joan(na) 6/ 0.2
4 Agnes 6/ 0.01
5 Emma 4/0.9
6 Isabella 4/1.3
7 Margery 4/--
8 Christiana 4 /--
9 Rohesia 3 /--
10 Juliana 3 /--

Of course, these figures are not directly comparable; the population of England is far larger than in the thirteenth century, so, for instance, the names "Alice", "Emma" and "Isabella", whilst representing a smaller PROPORTION of women, probably represent more women, numerically speaking, in 2001. However, it's interesting to see that some of these names have remained current and fashionable, whilst others are almost completely unknown. Anyone ever met a Rohesia? Exactly.

Another thing that must be taken into account is how many names were available. I've read that in the Elizabethan period, only perhaps 2 dozen names were really current. My experience as a medievalist show that the number of first names in wide use were very limited.

In the Victorian period, whilst there were more names, the top 10 names still represented nearly 70% of the population. This could never be the case now! The top ten names in 1838 for girls were:

Mary
Elizabeth
Sarah
Ann
Jane
Hannah
Emma
Eliza
Ellen
Harriet

Mary, meanwhile, remained the most popular name for a century - nowadays no trend lasts so long! What's also interesting is that all of these names are still familiar to British people, although they are not top 10 names. In particular, lots of girls are still called Elizabeth, Sarah, Jane, Hannah and Emma. And Emma, as we saw, was a hugely popular medieval name (it also appears in the middle ages as Emmot - less likely to appeal to today's parents!).

For comparison, the 2005 top 10 girls' names were:

Jessica
Emily
Sophie
Olivia
Chloe
Ellie
Grace
Lucy
Charlotte
Katie

(I know I posted the 2005 list recently, but I thought it worked here as a comparison.) None of the Victorian names appear in the top 10 - but 7/10 of them appear in the top 100. Guess some names are just classics!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the first set of names remind me of two medieval women writers that I know of: Margery Kemp and Julian of Norwich.

Indeed - those are probably the most famous medieval women writers. Margery in particular is an incredibly popular name - I have read so many medieval sources with Margerys!

I took a course in University on Women Writers of the Middle Ages.
There are a few other names I can recall as well
Heloise
Hildegard
Perpetua
Amalasuntha
Bridget

That's really interesting, thanks! I'm surprised how many of the 13th C names are currently in use!

I met a Christiana once. Only her parents were creative and called her Christie'ana. *gag* It's a pretty sounding name though.

Eep, with the apostrophe? Argh, that's horrible! But yeah, it sounds nice.

I do early modern history, and I'd say that's pretty true. There's a reason everyone in history seems to have the same name. ;)

There were a lot of very frustrated people in my Wars of the Roses, class, I know that.

Heh - I work with the Paston family letters and two of the sons are called John. And their father is called John. So they are referred to as John Pastons I, II and III!

XD We did a bit of work with their letters as well. But the major players are just as confusing sometimes. I made up this whole notation system to differentiate between Richard Neville, earl of Warwick and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, the other Richards and all of the Edwards.

It would be so easy to use titles if they didn't change all the time too!