This graph was done with R / ggplot, and is based on Geneanet data (first names of the father, first names of his children).

More here : https://github.com/nptodd/NamingForKinWW1 and here (in French) https://coulmont.com/blog/2021/06/22/transmission-prenom-guerre/

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You'll be named after your father about 10-15% of the time, with no increase in prevalence.

Unless, of course, war were declared.

I have a sneaking suspicion this was in memory of fathers who were killed.

The immediate jump after the declaration of war makes me think it's also that fathers were away from home at that time.

Ah, you know what, you’re right. I’d say memorializing is the small trend after and absence is closer to 80% of cause.

for sure.

similarly, people about to leave for war might want to leave a reminder for their child in case they died

*alarm goes off*

"What's that?"

"War were declared"

It’s not obvious to me what the dots here represent. Is it just a particular sample of newborn boys that was examined on a particular week?

I feel like a legend or some additional explanation text would help a little.

This is the cleanest regression discontinuity I've seen in my entire life.

Uff... Just a few points but so touching. Good work.

It's probably due to some kind of administration process change either in the naming process or the counting.

As a person who is named after my father. I find it repulsive to do that. I did not name my son after me and I have told him that it is a bad idea to do that. I can never understand why people do that. Your children are individuals. Their name in your family should show that. If you keep naming your boys or girls after living relatives. They will always be compared to that person with the same name that is living at the same time. A long dead relative name is ok as long as they have been dead for well over 50 years. Then there is no comparison between the 2. Personal opinion. Your opinion can and probably will differ from mine.

I think the point of this graph is that these children were not being named after living relatives...

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I think each dot represents some period of time?

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If you haven’t seen the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix, go watch it.

Unbelievably brutal but moving

That’s fair enough, but what if your dad has av really cool name?

I was about to comment "this is a text book RDD"

Pardon ignorance: forename = first name?

It says it at the top. Weekly Parental Forename Transmission Rate. It's not a sample, it's just the percentage of children that were born each week who got named after their dad.

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A son will be compared to his father even without the same name.

Is it that good?

I read the book in high school, but the WW1 movies never hit it for me like the WW1 books and the WW2 movies (well, WW2 any media)

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Solid Futurama ref

English dubbed, but done well.

Really highlights the pointless brutality of the whole conflict

It’s a brutally honest war movie. Some of the characters from the book are in the movie, but for the most part the movie deviates from the book. Instead it uses its setting to show you things about the war soldiers had to deal with like creeping artillery barrages, gas attacks, and even the first time a tank was used. The opening 5 mins is a great portrait of the war machine back home and the ending shows the pride and just how comically out of touch the men conducting the war were.

I'm named after my grandfather and I completely disagree. While I'm an individual, he contributed to who I am, both genetically and socially.

Interestingly, my dad is also named after his grandfather. So there's two names that are alternated between generations. I think I'm the 5th with my name but I don't have a suffix.

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Some of you may die, but it's a risk I'm willing to take

Now, I'm curious how it looks further into the war or beyond.

It's probably because families realized the mortality of the father and wanted to keep the family name going.

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Why did people get named after their fathers more?

It's ok. If you like war movies I'd say give it a go. Really shows the brutality of war, especially the first world war but I wouldn't say it comes anywhere near the level of the book or really good war movies.

World War I started so lots of new borns were named in their father’s memory

Yes, translation of "premier prénom" in French: so cases where the father's first name becomes the son's first name.

It's the start of the First Wold War. The effect is only for fathers under 35 years old.

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People want to remember dead fathers.

I liked being named after my dad. I feel like an extension of him - as he was an extension of his father - as we all are extensions of our ancestors. I feel honored to carry on the name.

"What happened?!"

"War were declared."

All right boys the challenge is to bring this up in a casual conversation

wow. it would be interesting to see something like this broken down by top N names. perhaps unavailable but things like location deployed to, role, rank, lag between deployment and birth, socioeconomic status too. probably a more nuanced task but would also be interesting to observe effects on daughter names.

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For me it was played in German with English Subs as the default.

it's really an astonishing finding

Each dot represents one week.

what about a father's name used for their first son's middle name?

Name the kids after the dead father to better secure support from late father's family. Classic survival move

Name me. Name me like one of your French boys

Shut up John

Ah sweet. By comparison (let me stress, by comparison) ima look dope as fuck

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?)

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.

Or were at high risk of being killed in the near future.

That was my first guess but the effect seems a little too fast-- the uptick occurs immediately after the declaration of war. My guess is that mothers starting the name after men who were at this point just deployed or soon to be deployed. Many of whom would end up dead later, of course.

Oh yeah, they were definitely hedging their bets.

My mother was named for her mother, which was also the name of her paternal aunt, and an assortment of other relatives on both sides. Her brother was named for his father. Most of my grandfather's brothers named their kids after themselves. When my mom got pregnant with me, the only daughter, my grandfather was "incensed* that she didn't name me after herself/her mother. My mother had grown up as the youngest in a household with three people sharing her name. She told him she'd never inflict that kind of vanity on her kid. (And on top of that, my dad was raised Jewish. They don't name their kids for living relatives.)

Anyway. Point is, I agree with you.

I would be proud to have been named after my dad.

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).

So it goes.

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?

Its a good war movie in a shallow pool of WW1 war movies. I dont think it was as well done as some of the top-tier WW2 movies, but it was still enjoyable and different in it's atmosphere than many others. Some of the shots were overly artistic and I felt like the camera focused on the gore-porn too much.

"Plus this ham gum is mostly bone!"

Yeah, I was curious if this dips down again into the 20s/30s and back up in the 40s?

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?

You have an even more interesting graph where it shows the rate of transmission falling back to base levels after May 1915 and for the rest of the war. That's about 9 months after deployment. Also interesting that fathers who were at a greater risk of dying were more likely to have their name passed down. Uncle name transmission lasted at elevated levels into the 1920s. Also interesting that daughters were also named after their fathers.

Edit: realized it was OC and reworded.

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.

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.

Where “it” was the misconception. Not the war. :)

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?

It dips back down to baseline 9 months after August 1 1914 for fathers but stays elevated even past the end of the war for uncles.

Yes that is exactly what happens when war is declared!

It’s not casualties, it’s the fact that war is declared.

Since the data dimensionality is so low, could you explain the math to do this then?

There wasn't a war going, and then there was. Why is it hard to believe that would cause some national concern?

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.

“Are you female” lol what are you implying, that women can’t understand what an impending war would feel like?

Not enough upvotes

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.

They have the original German dub on there as well, but the English dub was one of the best English live action dubs I've seen.

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Do they show how all those attacks resulted in ~zero feet gained?

Poo tee weet?

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

Quit dying you cowards

I live in America, all of our recent wars have been fought elsewhere. It just seems like common sense.

This mf above is what happens when you post and live in comfort without even realizing the period... also for the fact that the father died as well...

You can find many answers in our paper : here

https://web.archive.org/web/20210629071213id_/https://watermark.silverchair.com/jinh_a_01663.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAr0wggK5BgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggKqMIICpgIBADCCAp8GCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM3NctKjGJdn4lk4-7AgEQgIICcOmZ_1BJCIr0rDVoS0N4oh6FT0mxg_DT9AZgCqWpnFQT3XhdFnOGbxhxDWfgWnJQ7j645FN0_hcz3tSaaduo9mGEArw9wMo4sq63AeHFPezEdCQotgspcE3fwhV0BQarsNOMhkWKzs6ytzURBliR8poD9YXrL0XazHGNE-csF979Gm7Zg8c0_iFB7BDLc0wiMxWdoJmFneKX6fPCtpUE-jtE4cZRenJO-w9f6VSvh47uJVBRTV2ktV1u2Wczxjy-gOyq1Gaj7LR_dz8SHrg_CLKPcMqFDcKVygkAkXCXkALKOgSEBf-wMzhYCxbTvRiIT4osRnOhEf1sRaaA5XcaQ3Xt5YBA96LmeaK5U3txOoBfmm4u9afnd2lQN9mKJDSKjZ38R4bWojOsj5QRDkQAF4g2xuVlWTV2DuWg36faha9BaqA-SYX0X9_QlG9-b1t_Wy7trrTw70a9XAsNdf2skW2I7hBYPrqpDNgDb9wkhX6S129dMm52kC8xIhk_WLckiKGmEVKwi0EsOTi_9qCB4LfYliGnOOG71xGDU6hbDmwQaQOPftZlpUqbIwbsQgnrddIY1Eqfwfid4hHl6TpXsrNecWf5NegTFf4OUe_sSMM-nvyHj1uBxuat-d1BXxcEWRCdw1ib-P_OzKqjjOYZ0fFpMnbcdQmJu0RwTn8ThG307R91ITv3QSiWzxPfv-hcUVP5_2YVUBJs60RYHS8kSfGz4GsKHh6Udry5lD29Sb02KgH8n_x0hIn7B41Y291IP5gEM86phJTVUpr6rbRU29RWsSqGAUS32WueXEREQnmqXkfLS-zE_qX5RglnZFmoSw

(and if this link doesn't work the pre-print is here https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03448091/document

“Premier prénom” is redundant as “prénom” itself is “first name”, “nom” or “nom de famille” being the last name

French is extremely fun because of this. I absolutely enjoy filling forms that start with “Nom” (name) with my first or even my full name only for the next form item to be “Prénom” (first name).

Totally doesn’t happen every single time no sir.

My dad was named after his father and he completely agrees with you. Interesting!

lol reddet "objecting to the idea" as if it makes you an enemy or something

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.

i suppose it drops after 9 months because the fathers would have to be the ones not immediately sent away, whereas uncles persists longer because the father could still be home

You can have more than one forename.

"premier prénom" is not redundant as you can have multiple "prénoms". Your second name is your "deuxième prénom" and your third name is your "troisième prénom" etc. With your last name usually being one or two family names.

I’m asking about the comma, in the title.

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.

"And all the warring countries lived happily ever after...."

Agreed, otherwise you'd think it would still gradually increase more and more as the war dragged on.

This is so f*cking depressing.

"When using be in an if clause for an unreal conditional sentence, always conjugate it as were, no matter what the subject is. Even if the subject is first-person singular (I) or third-person singular (he, she, or it), still use were with an if clause in unreal conditional sentences. "

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/conditional-sentences-was-instead-of-were/

You see like a year go by and they are literally where they started.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Highly unlikely. That's not what the casualty rates of WW1 would look like. The sudden uptick is completely inconsistent with that. Why would you have the same ratio of deceased fathers after one week as after half a year?

>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.

Me, a French that has lived in France his whole life, messing up everytime too

It's interesting to see that in their culture 10% of the boys shared their first name with their father to begin with. It's almost unheard of in my country and would probably be considered a bit egoistical to name your kid to honor yourself.

But it's quite common for kids to be named after the deceased, example if one of the parent has a dead parent or a sibling they name the kid after them.

Thank you, this is super interesting. “avuncular transmission rate” is a new and memorable phrase for me. Age is an interesting discriminant I see. thanks again!

https://youtu.be/yZT-wVnFn60

What’s the actual scale of that map ?

Errr 1:1 , Sir…

Yes, but not a single french person will ask you your "Premier prénom".

When asking for someone's first name you simply ask what is the person's "prénom", and if you want to ask about if they have a second or third name then you simply ask about what their "second name" is or if they have other "prénoms".

But this is not asked often at all, as 2nd and 3rd names are only ever used in an administrative kind of way and never used to actually talk to someone.

It wasn't 100% of the nation. The jump was only 5%

Same in germany. I hate this. I also sometimes just fill in the last name, just to realize it's just one "Name" field and I was supposed to put the full name (first and last)

The key to victory is the element of surprise… surprise!

Damn that's... Pretty clever

Makes me wonder why Germans preferred to kill those French that didn't intend to name their first son after themselves.

>The war started on June 28

That's the day Gavrilo Princip killed prince Ferdinand, the war started in August

Never heard it before, but I like it!

I never thought about it that way. My grandfather was born after his father was send off to fight in WW2, so he never met his dad. But he does share a name with him. My great grandfather died fighting in the war and his son got to live on with the same name.

Imo it's good if you aren't familiar with the book or have a lot of WWI knowledge. The reasons being there are quite a few plot changes and historical errors. Still pretty enjoyable if you aren't expecting to be amazed though!

I’m so broken I’m trying to figure out how this is wrong. It’s just… beautiful…

Yes but here the precision is important because the data is specifically on the "premier prénom".

What do you think the atmosphere in Kyiv was on Feb 27?

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Unlike to WWII, important battles started about a week after after the declaration of war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frontiers

The first months of war were notably the bloodiest ones. The death rate was an order of magnitude above the average of the rest of the war. Trench warfare made the people forget this fact a little.

And my point is that, unless stated otherwise, "Prénom" means "Premier prénom".

Your comments are very informative and appreciated. Thank you.

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.

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Yeah because sometimes you just have one "Nom" and you're expected to write both name / first name, sometimes you have "Nom" first then "Prénom", sometimes "Prénom" first then "Nom".

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Somebody set up us the bomb!

Maybe a bunch of soon to be dads died and they got named after them

At first I read your comment as a dark joke about unfaithful wives having kids with their deployed husband's brother, but then I realized that it makes more sense that the men who weren't deployed were naming their sons after their brothers who were deployed or killed.

Reddit has jaded me into assuming the worst in commentators.

For the French speakers, there is also this podcast interview with the authors that explains the methodology and conclusions of the study of WW1 names :

http://parolesdhistoire.fr/index.php/tag/1e-guerre-mondiale/

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.

My father-in-law comes from a long line of men sharing the same first name. His mother didn't love the trend, but respected the family wishes, so she and everybody else just called him by the nickname common for his middle name (which she otherwise would've used as his first). Now if anybody calls looking for somebody by his first name they assume it's spam because nobody who actually knows him calls him that.

Is there a clear reason for this? Extrapolating, it could be a sense of impending/potential death (so, passing the name on), but do we know any more on this?

To quote OP, the author of the paper, in French:

"Entre 1905 et le 1er août 1914, mois après mois, semaine après semaine, 12% des garçons environ reçoivent en premier prénom le premier prénom de leur père. [...] Mais dès la semaine du 3 août 1914, après la déclaration de guerre et la mobilisation générale du 1er août 1914, le taux de transmission passe à 17 ou 18%."

The same thing said with "prénom" instead of "premier prénom" could just as well mean that boys would have their father's first name as a second name. Both are prénoms. Or even their father's second name as a second name. Or any combination of prénoms (I have my father's second name "Marie" as my third).

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But I can't read French!

Skill issue?

Main screen turn on!

This is so damn clean! I love how you could do a beautiful regression without regrets here

Such an interesting real world example of regression discontinuuity

I think a line graph would've worked better here since it's a time series

How does it compare to Come and See?

The quote is actually “stop exploding you cowards”

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.

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Probably also a lot of mothers that were naming their sons after dead fathers

it's not like we have a word that makes it clear that it's the last name. That'd be ridiculous