Message: "The Mary effect..."

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The Mary effect...

by Amphelise (Chrisell)

6/1/2021, 4:52 AM

According to my rough calculations, in 1901 there were around 254,230 baby girls' births registered in the US. Of those, 13,136 or a whopping 5.167% were named Mary. Another 2% were named Helen, and the next 7 names (Anna, Margaret, Ruth, Elizabeth, Marie, Florence and Ethel) accounted for another 10.2% combined.

The result of this very heavy weighting towards the top few names is that names with quite small usages, like Barbara, get pulled further up the rankings.

https://nanowrimo.org/participants/christine-seaforth-finch
http://christineseaforthfinch.blogspot.com/

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- elbowin +1

6/1/2021, 2:21 PM

I don't know why Amphelise's answer got a downvote because it is exactly to the point. The name frequency distribution in 1900 was very top heavy with thin tails, whereas the distribution nowadays has much thicker tails.

- Amphelise (Chrisell)

6/2/2021, 6:45 AM

I didn't even know we HAD upvotes and downvotes on here lol.

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