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Help[Facts] Why no Australian or South African/ Other African Countries
Why is there no name generator for African Countries or Australia?
Please solve this!
Please solve this!
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Replies
I don't know why Australia does charts for provinces and not for the whole country.
South Africa has eleven official languages, and there is no one predominant language in the country, so it would be very hard to list the most popular names. Most African countries are made up of several ethnic groups, which means that there are different sets of names within one country. Different religions also has an effect, since many African countries contain Christians, Muslims, and animists all living under one nation, so naturally Africans of different religions would use different names.
South Africa has eleven official languages, and there is no one predominant language in the country, so it would be very hard to list the most popular names. Most African countries are made up of several ethnic groups, which means that there are different sets of names within one country. Different religions also has an effect, since many African countries contain Christians, Muslims, and animists all living under one nation, so naturally Africans of different religions would use different names.
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Well, Australia doesn't have provinces, for a start ;) We have states.
Australia is a federation of states, and births, deaths and marriages are all controlled by the individual states not by the federal government, so data on popular names is collected and presented by individual states. There's no central body responsible for collecting that data and processing it for the whole country, so it doesn't happen unless someone pays for a report or something. It's also complicated by the fact that different states publish different types of data sets for different numbers of names, so it'd be a bit of a hodge-podge of statistics.
Australia is a federation of states, and births, deaths and marriages are all controlled by the individual states not by the federal government, so data on popular names is collected and presented by individual states. There's no central body responsible for collecting that data and processing it for the whole country, so it doesn't happen unless someone pays for a report or something. It's also complicated by the fact that different states publish different types of data sets for different numbers of names, so it'd be a bit of a hodge-podge of statistics.
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A name generator for Australia just wouldn't be that interestingly different from any of the other predominantly English-speaking countries. There are a few quirky differences in pronunciation and popularity between them, but not enough that you can say with certainty where any particular name came from.
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As was mentioned, there are not enough names in some categories. However, there are enough Igbo and Yoruba names, so I have added those to the options.
(At the same time, I also added options for Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Pakistani, Norse and Anglo-Saxon.)
(At the same time, I also added options for Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Pakistani, Norse and Anglo-Saxon.)
This message was edited 4/5/2016, 11:51 AM
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Can't answer for the rest of the continent, but in South Africa we don't make birth-name data available; even the census info is mined for its data and then destroyed. This means that researchers have to rely on, let's say, school-leaving exam results, which are in the public domain usually, and this gives a small and distinctive group from which I'd hesitate to generalise.
Then of course there's the issue of South Africa having eleven official languages. Many parents who do not have English or Afrikaans as their home language choose to give their children a European as well as an African name as this is felt to be to their advantage when entering the labour market, but as a custom it seems to be dying out. Leaving even more problems for a would-be listmaker.
The most useful - and authoritative - list I know of is:
http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/baby-names-030915.htm#.VwPZ9-SlOM8
As you will see, there is no indication of what language these names appear in; one would assume that there'd be a preponderance of Zulu names, including the closely-related Xhosa and Swazi, but without meanings and geographical areas one isn't left much wiser, frankly. I wish there was more I could suggest. But I'll keep looking.
Then of course there's the issue of South Africa having eleven official languages. Many parents who do not have English or Afrikaans as their home language choose to give their children a European as well as an African name as this is felt to be to their advantage when entering the labour market, but as a custom it seems to be dying out. Leaving even more problems for a would-be listmaker.
The most useful - and authoritative - list I know of is:
http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/baby-names-030915.htm#.VwPZ9-SlOM8
As you will see, there is no indication of what language these names appear in; one would assume that there'd be a preponderance of Zulu names, including the closely-related Xhosa and Swazi, but without meanings and geographical areas one isn't left much wiser, frankly. I wish there was more I could suggest. But I'll keep looking.
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http://www.behindthename.com/random/
I see African as an option on the name generator and Australian would be listed under the English option (just as American names and all other countries that speak a variation of British English), unless you are referring to aboriginal names? In that case I am guessing its because there isn't enough names submitted to the database to make an entire generator for them. The same goes for the reasoning behind the category being African on the generator and not each individual country/language.
You can still look up names in either of those categories here: http://www.behindthename.com/names/list
I see African as an option on the name generator and Australian would be listed under the English option (just as American names and all other countries that speak a variation of British English), unless you are referring to aboriginal names? In that case I am guessing its because there isn't enough names submitted to the database to make an entire generator for them. The same goes for the reasoning behind the category being African on the generator and not each individual country/language.
You can still look up names in either of those categories here: http://www.behindthename.com/names/list
This message was edited 4/5/2016, 3:15 AM
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