What's in a Name?

Aside from all the misery on the news this week one story that interested me was the Office for National Statistics publishing the “league table” of popular baby names. This was based upon the first given names for children born in England and Wales during the last year. The General Register Office of Scotland (GROS) produces a similar list for those born North of the border – in fact they produce all sorts of interesting things like this which I used to aimlessly browse through at work whilst supposedly processing the other statistical data that they sent through. When I was at school the most popular boys names were things like John, David, Mark, Paul, James and Andrew – I’m pretty sure that must have covered a good proportion of my school year. In the whole school I knew one other boy that went by the name Rod although his full first name was different. In fact the only person I ever came across that appeared to have the same name was a former British diplomat but it turned out that his named had been misspelt (I know the feeling).

I find the trends in given names interesting. Some children are named after family members, whereas others are named after friends or popular celebrities. I was named after the 8th Century Last King of the Goths for reasons that I have never quite been able to determine. Apparently my Welsh grandmother favoured the name Rhodri whereas my father liked the more Scottish Gavin although at the time there was the famous writer Gavin Maxwell which might have given me some sort of otter fixation (although I ended up with that as a middle name). So I ended up with Roderic – possibly not so much as a compromise but more to do with the priest having been at the communion wine again. Whatever the reason it stuck and I have been endlessly spelling it out ever since.

So how do I compare to today’s children? Well, in England and Wales the most popular boys names are now Oliver, Jack, Harry, Jacob and Charlie each of which are represented by over 5,000 birth certificates. We would probably get Muhammed up there as well if it were not for several different spellings. In fact it is interesting that diminutive names are now more commonly given that the full name they are based on (for example: 6,212 Jacks compared to 576 Johns). And how many Roderics are there? None whatsoever. The nearest we get are 20 Rhodris and 6 boys called Roddy. To put that in context there are 13 Thors and 29 Odins (which I must admit are pretty cool first names).

So how do I fare on the Scottish list? Pretty much another non-appearance although we get closer with 4 Rodericks, 2 Roddys, a Rodi and a Rodrigo. It’s worth seeing Scotland in isolation due to the tradition of giving people second names as first names and, in fact, there are 22 people christened Maxwell which gives me the somewhat inverse Scottish attribute of having a first name as a surname.

Of course the popularity of names change over time which is why I find many names now given to children sounding somewhat antiquated – particularly girls names as many of those in current vogue are ones I remember as being ancient maiden aunts or old women who vaguely remembered Victoria being queen. Having a look at the data on GROS, the boys names that were most popular around 1900 are still reasonably modern sounding with James and Andrew in the top 10. Of the girls names it’s all change and very few girls are now given the once common names of Mary, Margaret or Agnes. The interesting thing is that in a few years time the Sophies and Olivers will become very dated again and it could be that the Johns and Agneses are prominent once more. However, I can’t see there being many babies being named Roderic any time soon.