observation
Jun. 6th, 2011 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyI do a lot of data-crunching with names. Names from all sorts of times and places. And I have a pattern for how I crunch them: After I've transcribed a data set, I sort it (either the entire data set, or year at a time) alphabetically. Then I get all examples of the same name together, makes it easier to count them, and I also get variants grouped close enough together that I can often spot variant pairs that I wouldn't otherwise have recognized if they were not near each other.
You know what I've noticed? There is a strong alphabetic distinction between girl's names and boy's names. Girl's names are more likely to start with letters in the beginning of the alphabet, and boy's with ones at the end of the alphabet. This is particularly clear to see in 16th C English datasets. To give you an example, the following are the names of people married in Chedzoy, Somerset, in 1560:
Girls: Agnes, Alice, Eliz. (2), Johan, Margaret, Margerye
Boys: John (2), Richard, Thomas (2), William (2)
Except for the exception of John, I could draw a line partway through the list and all the names on one side are girl's and all the ones on the other side are boy's.
Weird.
You know what I've noticed? There is a strong alphabetic distinction between girl's names and boy's names. Girl's names are more likely to start with letters in the beginning of the alphabet, and boy's with ones at the end of the alphabet. This is particularly clear to see in 16th C English datasets. To give you an example, the following are the names of people married in Chedzoy, Somerset, in 1560:
Girls: Agnes, Alice, Eliz. (2), Johan, Margaret, Margerye
Boys: John (2), Richard, Thomas (2), William (2)
Except for the exception of John, I could draw a line partway through the list and all the names on one side are girl's and all the ones on the other side are boy's.
Weird.
