Female Given Name Distribution in 1990 Census
The most popular female names according to the 1990 Census is:
Surname.....%......Rank
MARY............ 2.629...........1
PATRICIA...... 1.073...........2
LINDA.............1.035...........3
BARBARA......0.980...........4
ELIZABETH....0.937...........5
JENNIFER..... 0.932...........6
MARIA............0.828...........7
SUSAN............0.794...........8
MARGARET.. 0.768...........9
DOROTHY......0.727........... 10
The top 10 names represent only 10% of all female names. This means that female names have a greater variety than male names, where the top 10 male names make up almost 25% of all names.
Mary clearly has its roots in Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the other Marys in the New Testament.
Linda and Maria both have roots in both English and non-English ethnic groups. This allows them to rank much higher than male names and surnames which are predominantly English in origin.
Mary and Elizabeth are also names of famous English Queen's names.
Surname.....%......Rank
MARY............ 2.629...........1
PATRICIA...... 1.073...........2
LINDA.............1.035...........3
BARBARA......0.980...........4
ELIZABETH....0.937...........5
JENNIFER..... 0.932...........6
MARIA............0.828...........7
SUSAN............0.794...........8
MARGARET.. 0.768...........9
DOROTHY......0.727........... 10
The top 10 names represent only 10% of all female names. This means that female names have a greater variety than male names, where the top 10 male names make up almost 25% of all names.
Mary clearly has its roots in Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the other Marys in the New Testament.
Linda and Maria both have roots in both English and non-English ethnic groups. This allows them to rank much higher than male names and surnames which are predominantly English in origin.
Mary and Elizabeth are also names of famous English Queen's names.
posted by David at 8:44 AM
2 Comments:
I once did some similar research using data from the SSI, but it only dealt with given names of children born each year, not the number of people alive with each name. The census information would actually be much more valuable, if recent years are available. (Let me know if they are!)
There's an extremely cool website that gives a visual representation of changes in popularity of given names over time, but it used the same data I already had. The baby name blog is also very good.
I sent this to my wife, I kne she would enjoy the difference in male to female names.
Nice blog post Dave.
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