The latest Baby Names were published yesterday by National Statistics. This prompted me to try to find the answer to question which always bugs me when these appear.
Which name(s) do they count?
The notes to the tables do not make this clear, saying only that ‘These rankings have been produced using the exact spelling of the name given at birth registration. Similar names with different spellings have been counted separately.’
Most babies have more than one first or forename - some have a whole football team though I guess the most usual number is two. From the numbers in the National Statistics tables I guess they count only the first first name mentioned on the registration, though since only the top 100 names are covered by the tables, it is impossible to be absolutely sure of this.
I wonder if anybody has ever attempted to establish how many babies are, from the start, intended to be known by their second or higher order first name. Parents may choose not to put this name first on the birth certificate for a variety of reasons, ranging from euphony, to sucking up to the person whose name you are giving to the child, to the avoidance of an unfortunate set of initials. Some parents may even come from a culture where different conventions apply.
It’s not that I think that the figures mislead in any important way but, as someone with several family members who are & always have been known by a name, registered but not the first on the list, & as someone who was taught from the very beginning about the importance of definition in official statistics, this lack of clarity in the explanatory notes really gets my goat.
On the plus side, the National Statistics website continues to improve, is much easier to navigate & to find historic data rather than merely the latest 'product' & it is good to see experiments with newer graphic methods of presentation.
