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Re: Grain of salt on Guinness Book of Names lists for 1700 and 1800
Oh that's very irritating! Do you know of any more accurate data?*"That cynicism you refer to I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys."
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There probably are people working in the field; if I had time on my hands, I'd go to the FreeBMD website and try going through all the Smith babies born in ... Nottingham probably rather than London, in the first quarter of the earliest year they have. Which isn't very early: early 19th century I think. But should give some kind of overview.If you were to find an Onomastics Society or something like one, that'd be an excellent way in. Here in South Africa, most of the work is being done on geographical names since we don't make any baby name statistics available - don't calculate them in the first place, in fact. The Civil Service always says it's going to, but hasn't yet - grrr!
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