Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Buck_Thorn t1_ist0jmf wrote

Now do it with town/city names that use trees and geographic features, like Maple Hill, Oak Valley, Acorn Ridge, Pine Bend, etc.

15

jeffinRTP t1_issy2th wrote

I wonder if it has changed over time? Have some names been popular and then fallen out or have they consistently been used? Also are they more popular in certain areas than others? I think they are more common in the south but I do not know.

6

earnest_dad OP t1_issyqyv wrote

These are *excellent* questions. With the data we have, it's much easier to examine the first question you posed. It seems totally doable to create an indicator for whether a name is a combination (like these), and look at the proportion of all names that satisfy this property over time. I'm guessing you're right that there's some regional variation, but unfortunately the babynames library I used doesn't connect names to distinct geographies. Would be very cool to examine that, though!

Thanks for the comment!

9

jeffinRTP t1_ist46sn wrote

I've noticed usage changes over time as when someone is famous their names become more common etc. Not sure if census data would help with geography or popularity over time.

Your chart is interesting because I've never thought about compound names and it caused me to think about it and other things.

1

Purplekeyboard t1_iswai0z wrote

Names absolutely go in and out of fashion over the years. A name will start to become popular, then become super popular, then everyone will decide it's too popular and stop using it because every grade school class will have 5 girls named Mary/Lisa/Heather/Olivia.

Once a name falls out of fashion, it becomes a middle aged woman's name, then an old woman's name, and nobody wants to name their baby girl an old woman's name so the name vanishes. And then is available once again to become a new trendy name.

1

Disastrous-Year571 t1_isvedxf wrote

The Beach Boys:

“Tried PeggySue

Tried BettyLou

Tried MaryLou

But I knew she wouldn't do-

BarbaraAnn, BarbaraAnn, Take my hand

You got me rockin' and a rollin'

Rockin' and a reelin'

BarbaraAnn

Ba-Ba, Ba-Ba-BarbaraAnn…”

5

magnesiumb t1_iswm9p8 wrote

Adalynn still gets me. Adamary? Adabelle? Adabella?

Is Ada supposed to be Ara, by chance? These all make more sense as Aralynn, Aramary (ok, not much more sense), Arabelle and Arabella?

2

earnest_dad OP t1_isxvmrp wrote

Interesting question! (Similarly, I'm more familiar with "ara" prefixes; from my identification strategy, though, "Ara" isn't a common standalone name in the way "Ada" is).

As it turns out, this isn't a bug --

"Adalynn" has been in use (with n>5 instances) since 1996, and is really on the rise since ~1007. In 2017, there were 2.651 female sex babies given the name "Adalynn"

"Adamary" isn't used with the frequency that "Adalynn" is given, but we're seeing its use along a similar timeline -- the name first crossed the (n>5) threshold in 1998, and it has been used at least that many times every year since. While its usage is declining recently, in the early 2000s it was typically given ~40 times per year.

Similar stories with "Adabelle" and "Adabella", though the timelines are different. "Adabell" is a *much* older name -- it was given to a handful of female sex babies starting in the early 20th century -- we see n>5 uses quite frequently from 1900 - 1931, then it falls off the radar until 2006.

"Adabella" looks more like "Adamary" -- wasn't really in vogue (if you can even say that about a VERY rare name) until 2008.

1

earnest_dad OP t1_isswtbh wrote

Source: babynames library (R package): https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/babynames/index.html

Note: this package draws data from the US Social Security Administration

Tools used: R

data preprocessing: tidyverse

visualization: ggplot2

Additional notes:

(1) identify "standalone" names by finding top 1000 female names

(2) identify names that are composed of two standalone names combined

(3) identify common "prefix" and "suffix" names by finding the maximum (annual) proportion of names from (2); restrict to instances where log(max frequency) > -8.5

(4) restrict attention to combined names composed of the names from (3)

(5) hand-edit (that is, remove) unusual prefixes and suffixes: (redditors objected to the inclusion of "eliza-beth" and "elisa-beth"; also hand-remove "ina" and "ora")

Note: an earlier draft of this plot did not filter to female names only, and so incidentally included the name "Josue", a male name which is composed of the common female standalone names, "Jo" and "Sue"

1

Shufflepants t1_istg75o wrote

I have an aunt who named all her kids "Jo-".

1

sexy_wash_bucket t1_iswjd0x wrote

Key seems to be mislabeled on the right.

1

earnest_dad OP t1_isxtgkg wrote

Can you say a bit more about the concern here? The code I used does the following:

(1) identifies the "maximal proportion" as the greatest share (of all female names in that year) a name receives in any year. Note that these maximal proportions are quite small -- the greatest value represented here is "Joanne" with 0.00420; the smallest values in this chart are less than 10^-5.

(2) convert to "1 name per..." by finding 1/maximal proportion, Note that by this measure, "Joanne" is roughly 1 per 238 names; the very uncommon names (e.g. lilylynn" are roughly 1 per 400,000.

(3) use a log scale gradient to plot

2

sexy_wash_bucket t1_isxtmmv wrote

You’re totally right. Misread it. My bad.

1

earnest_dad OP t1_isy0rkv wrote

No worries! There are *so* many bugs that end up making their way in here -- good for me to do the double-check!

2

Ghrota t1_isxd1ep wrote

No lilly-lee ? I'm disapointed

1

earnest_dad OP t1_isxvvrx wrote

Sorry to disappoint. In case it eases the sorrow, there were 5 babies in 2007 named "Lilylynn", which is similarly difficult to say, but I agree -- not quite as exciting as the much-discussed, but never actually documented "Lilly-lee"

1

-KR- t1_isxfp4a wrote

Joanne, Joanna, Johanna etc. are not compound names, but normal "standalone" names. Just because names have multiple syllables doesn't mean they are compounded.

1

earnest_dad OP t1_isxugk0 wrote

I think you may be onto an interesting piece of this, but I do want to be precise about how the names here are identified (this is described carefully in the source / tools comment above. Note that syllabic count isn't a feature here).

I (personally) think it's interesting to identify names that can be sub-divided into standalone names. There's some complexity around whether names that can technically be subdivided (but we do not think about as compound names themselves) should be included. As an example that generated a lot of discussion in a previous version, think about something like "Elizabeth" that can technically be subdivided into the standalone names "Eliza" and "Beth", but we don't really think of as a compound name in the sense you describe.

I think you raise an interesting question that gets at what the central interpretation of the plot is; there's a question here about whether this strategy maps cleanly onto true compound names, and I think you're right that there are some we'd want to hand-edit (or otherwise identify) if that's the main goal. To me, it's a tricky thing to decide.

1

Sketzell t1_itp7v6x wrote

Somehow this chart made me hate compound names.

1