Long-Term Trends in Given Name Frequencies in England and Wales

Abstract

The frequency distribution of personal given names offers important evidence about the information economy. This paper presents data on the popularity of the most frequent personal given names (first names) in England and Wales over the past millennium. The popularity of a name is its frequency relative to the total name instances sampled. The data show that the popularity distribution of names, like the popularity of other symbols and artifacts associated with the information economy, can be helpfully viewed as a power law. Moreover, the data on name popularity suggest that historically distinctive changes in the information economy occurred in conjunction with the Industrial Revolution.