The effect of the First World War on names, in France [OC]Submitted by bjco t3_ysedll in dataisbeautiful
earnest_dad t1_ivzub2g wrote
This is the cleanest regression discontinuity I've seen in my entire life.
Ejm819 t1_iw0fza4 wrote
I was about to comment "this is a text book RDD"
paul_f t1_iw13seg wrote
it's really an astonishing finding
_Batnaan_ t1_ivzuwkd wrote
It's probably due to some kind of administration process change either in the naming process or the counting.
Southernbelle5959 t1_iw0nnf1 wrote
It's probably because families realized the mortality of the father and wanted to keep the family name going.
Content_Flamingo_583 t1_iw19g7k wrote
I’d be curious if they were that worried about mortality literally the day the war started, which is what this data reflects.
From what I understand, many people vastly underestimated how long and deadly the war was going to be. Many thought it would be a quick, even exciting affair.
It would take weeks and months for the casualties to start piling up and for people to start realizing just how deadly the war was.
But I don’t know, I guess I don’t have a better explanation. I don’t know why you’d only be concerned about keeping your name going (which typically only applies to the first born) if you’re going to die during the war (vs. dying of natural causes years later?)
oioioifuckingoi t1_iw1e27g wrote
The war started on June 28. This data starts in August/September. In less than a month, in the beginning of August to the beginning of September, France suffered over 300,000 casualties in the Battle of the Frontiers. It is commonly misunderstood that people thought this was going to be a quick and bloodless affair, especially for the French. It lasted less than a month.
platitood t1_iw1ej70 wrote
Where “it” was the misconception. Not the war. :)
lenzflare t1_iw1t4fz wrote
"And all the warring countries lived happily ever after...."
RedditSuggestion1234 t1_iw21rsm wrote
>The war started on June 28
That's the day Gavrilo Princip killed prince Ferdinand, the war started in August
WaerI t1_iw1wph4 wrote
While its not surprising to see an immediate increase, it is strange that it would increase so sharply and then stop. As you say over the few months after the war began the casualties increased significantly so you would expect the rise here to increase constantly over those months to some degree. There was certainly space for it to do so as the percentage never really maxes out (I would say the max is below 100% given many family's will already have sons named after the father but still). There could have been some national push towards naming children for there fathers over one specific week but I think its more likely that there is some irregularity in how the data was collected which seems likely in war time.
fail-deadly- t1_iw2b31m wrote
France had a single 24 hour period in August 1914 where it had more than 25,000 troops killed, and it only had a population of 41 million.
I mean Russia seems to be absolutely pissing away Soldiers lives in its current war, but there doesn’t seem to be anything close to that day’s losses, and Russia has a population of more than 140 million people.
Sooperfreak t1_iw1t0vj wrote
The only other difference I can think of is that once the men left for war there was an almost instant change to mothers being solely responsible for naming their children.
Maybe it’s simply that a mother is more likely to name a child after her husband than a fathers is to name a child after himself.
Viend t1_iw1xv7f wrote
>Maybe it’s simply that a mother is more likely to name a child after her husband than a fathers is to name a child after himself.
I highly doubt this, but the fact that there is a good chance daddy's dead makes it much more plausible.
abandoningeden t1_iw2aklz wrote
Maybe a bunch of soon to be dads died and they got named after them
Thumperfootbig t1_iw1c11c wrote
You don’t think that enlisting in the army to go off to fight and die causes the soldier and his wife to think about mortality?
TNSepta t1_iw1e01v wrote
It's not about the concern, it is more about how abrupt the change is. It feels extremely unlikely for the entire nation to switch from being unconcerned to fully concerned over the timespan of a week.
1945BestYear t1_iw1vvjl wrote
That was quite literally what happened, across most of Europe. Franz Ferdinand is shot on the 28th of June, and it's front-page news in Western Europe for maybe a day. Nobody seriously thinks that this could start a continent-wide war. For about four weeks, while a perfect storm of wrong assumptions and misunderstandings between diplomats and ministers gradually builds up to Russia's call for mobilisation on the 31st of July, France is busy talking about a completely different assassination, that of the newspaper editor Gaston Calmette by Henriette Caillaux, a socialite and wife of a former prime minister, who thought Calmette was going to publish intimate letters of theirs that were written while they were both married to other people.
France going from talking about that to hearing declarations of war and mobilising to meet the invading Germans happens in days, its complete whiplash for everyone in France. Imagine if in 1995 the US just abruptly went to war with Russia or something while in the middle of the OJ Simpson trial. Or put this another way; not many people in America were worrying about terrorist attacks or Islamic fundamentalism on the 10th of September of 2001.
nagumi t1_iw3lei9 wrote
This was very well written. Thank you.
Thumperfootbig t1_iw1fb03 wrote
Yes that is exactly what happens when war is declared!
Condawg t1_iw1g815 wrote
There wasn't a war going, and then there was. Why is it hard to believe that would cause some national concern?
j_cruise t1_iw1ixku wrote
I think it's hard for people to imagine when they've never experienced a war take place within their country, or somewhere very near to their country.
Condawg t1_iw1nej4 wrote
I live in America, all of our recent wars have been fought elsewhere. It just seems like common sense.
sabot00 t1_iw2424y wrote
What do you think the atmosphere in Kyiv was on Feb 27?
creamyjoshy t1_iw1z7kj wrote
It wasn't 100% of the nation. The jump was only 5%
MaxTHC t1_iw1ltth wrote
It's only a 5% jump. Quite possible that this jump was due to war breaking out, and that the number kept climbing as casualties started mounting
WaerI t1_iw1vvn6 wrote
But the confusing thing is the jump stayed at 5%. I can see there being an immediate uptick but I'd expect that rise to continue for a while before leveling.
MaxTHC t1_iw462j9 wrote
You know what, my brain interpreted the ticks on the plot as month-long intervals. So I thought it was a much shorter time scale than it actually is.
WaerI t1_iw1w29g wrote
Even if there was an immediate increase, I can't see why that increase wouldn't continue as the war got worse throughout the year.
1945BestYear t1_iw1x60r wrote
People before the war did actually expect that a war between great powers would be immensely bloody, which is part of why the majority of people wanted to avoid war if at all possible. They just assumed that it would also be short, a matter of a few months.The bloodbaths of August and September were basically what people were imagining would happen.
PressFforAlderaan t1_iw27su1 wrote
Your comments are very informative and appreciated. Thank you.
WaerI t1_iw45vu6 wrote
I understand that, its just odd to me that everyone went to max concern in just one week. I would have thought as the war went on and more soldiers died the rate of naming would increase. Especially considering it only rises roughly 5 percent. Remember in that first data point is late July to early August which actually means that the bloodbaths of August and September had little effect
LifeOnNightmareMode t1_iw28soq wrote
Because casualtity rates were at more less constant level throughout those month. So if we assume that only those where the father was killed would be name after them then the rate of naming could stay somewhat constant too.
WaerI t1_iw44quk wrote
I would disagree since there are two things that need to happen based on that assumption. The father has to die, and then the baby must be born. If the fathers deaths follow a perfect step function (i.e they are constant once war is declared) the rate of naming will increase as the proportion of dead fathers increases. Based on that assumption what this data implies is almost all of the fathers died simultaneously. Basically the rate of naming is the integral of the rate of deaths
LifeOnNightmareMode t1_iwhuplj wrote
I don’t think so as each dot is the rate at that day.
WaerI t1_iwigk0s wrote
I'm not sure what you mean I understand that each dot is the rate at that day. My point is that if all the fathers died at once we would expect the naming chang to instantly rise and stay high as it is here for roughly 9 months. This is because the child isn't named when the father dies they are named when they are born some time in the next 9 months.
LifeOnNightmareMode t1_iwilt4a wrote
I was thinking along the lines that if the number of future fathers dying remains constant than the naming should remain constant too. Only if the number of death per day increases then the naming would increase too. But it’s just speculating as I don’t know what really happened :)
WaerI t1_iwirjzq wrote
I understand that, but what I'm saying is that if the number of fathers dying remains constant than the naming will gradually increase for 9 months at which point it will remain constant. If there's 100000 fathers and 1000 died a week and there is also 1000 births we would only expect 1% or 10 of those babies to have dead fathers. This means that the number of babies with dead fathers is proportional to the proportion of fathers who are dead. The next week if both numbers remained constant we would expect the number to be 2% and so on. Conversely even if fathers stopped dying there would still be a large number of births with dead fathers for several months.
polytique t1_iw0sxc2 wrote
It's the start of the First Wold War. The effect is only for fathers under 35 years old.
thejdobs t1_iw0rl9p wrote
World War I started so lots of new borns were named in their father’s memory
Content_Flamingo_583 t1_iw1akzr wrote
But the first big deadly battle for France wasn’t until September (First Battle of the Marne). And this tend seems to start right at the outbreak of the war in July (as soon as the war was declared). So I don’t think this can be viewed as a response to casualties inflicted.
monedula t1_iw1pslv wrote
Not actually true: they already lost 75,000 dead in August. And it looks to me as if the discontinuity is in August - it's a shame that the x-axis is poorly marked.
[deleted] t1_iw1wbnz wrote
[removed]
elmananamj t1_iw2vr0l wrote
Battle of the frontiers
Thumperfootbig t1_iw1ca33 wrote
When men go to war they know the risks. Why are you even objecting to the idea of this being absolutely driven by people suddenly being faced with their mortality, and then changing their priorities and decisions accordingly?
fail_whale_fan_mail t1_iw1eot0 wrote
Damn, dude. Because it's a super clean shift and data is rarely that clean. It's possible it's related to the war, but it's very fair to question.
Also it looks like it's followed by only a very slight trend upward in subsequent months which is kind of weird. As casualties increase, and there's more passed family members to honor, why doesn't it continue increasing at a steeper slope?
fearatomato t1_iw1pg3x wrote
lol reddet "objecting to the idea" as if it makes you an enemy or something
riotousgrowlz t1_iw2my5e wrote
To your second point, there’s a limit to how many boys born in this period can be named after their fathers since many sons already have older brother named after their father.
Thumperfootbig t1_iw1fe7p wrote
It’s not casualties, it’s the fact that war is declared.
fail_whale_fan_mail t1_iw1gm4h wrote
If the underlying driver is thinking about mortality, it seems both the declaration of war and the death of loved ones would drive up the rate.
It's possible the declaration of war had this effect, but the pattern of the dots raise some red flags, which I would want to investigate further before supporting any interpretation.
PioneerSpecies t1_iw1ig8p wrote
“Are you female” lol what are you implying, that women can’t understand what an impending war would feel like?
morconheiro t1_iw1t7em wrote
Agreed, otherwise you'd think it would still gradually increase more and more as the war dragged on.
NarcissusLovesEcho t1_iw1bvx0 wrote
I'm such a stats geek that I'm actually getting a little emotional looking at it (the topic is probably also playing a role).
andreasbeer1981 t1_iw21afs wrote
Makes me wonder why Germans preferred to kill those French that didn't intend to name their first son after themselves.
exradical t1_iw2qn8l wrote
Probably also a lot of mothers that were naming their sons after dead fathers
DarkSideOfGrogu t1_iw2uxy7 wrote
Probably for the same reason pirates prevented global warming.
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