Popularity statistics from Belgium and the Netherlands.
Hello Mike,I recently came across the following popularity statistics from the Low Countries, which I would like to bring to your attention.The Meertens Institute in the Netherlands has the top 20 from 1996 to 2003 for each gender on their website. Their source is the same as yours, namely: Sociale Verzekeringsbank (SVB). You can view the statistics here:https://voornamen.meertens.knaw.nl/9601.html (in Dutch)I know that you can't directly connect it to the top 500 of most popular names in the Netherlands, since that starts at 2008. But this might still be a good thing to have (and perhaps display separately), since it provides some insight into when some names first began to become popular in the Netherlands.As for Belgium: on the Neerlandistiek ("Dutch language study") website, Dr. Gerrit Bloothooft of the Meertens Institute has made available the top 20 of Flanders and Wallonia (for each gender) from 1900 onwards. His source is the same as yours, namely: Statistics Belgium (Statbel).Everything is grouped per decade rather than per year, which is definitely not ideal. However, this still provides some insight into how the Flemish and Walloon naming culture changed over the course of 120 years, which is valuable IMHO. You can view the statistics here:Flanders: https://neerlandistiek.nl/2022/03/voornamen-in-vlaanderen-vanaf-1900/ (in Dutch)
Wallonia: https://neerlandistiek.nl/2022/04/voornamen-in-wallonie-vanaf-1900/ (in Dutch)Dr. Bloothooft also shares useful background information as well as his own observations about the statistics of each federal region, so you might want to run the pages through Google Translate or DeepL Translate.That's all - I hope this will be of use to you in at least *some* way. :)

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
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Thanks Lucille! These are useful. I'm not sure yet whether I'll put these series on the site. Having two disconnected series for the same region doesn't work smoothly here (it's something on my todo list to deal with). I do it for some places (England, Germany, Spain), but I don't like to do it. It's frustrating when there are gaps and inconsistencies in the series, especially when I believe that the SVB has the data for earlier years, but has not published it.
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