It took some digging and counting to come up with the answer.
I use RootsMagic 8. By using the Person Search-Advanced, I could search on the
Given Name. I tried four common first names: Mary, John, William, and Elizabeth.
The results are in reverse order:
- William has 58 entries.
- Elizabeth has 66 entries, including 10 with no known last name. Eliza has 6 entries.
- Mary has 91 entries, including 23 with no known last name.
- John has 97 entries.
However, I realized that I was missing people who also had
middle names, so I changed the criteria to “contain” the name. I got a
different outcome:
- Elizabeth has 150 entries.
- William has 210 entries.
- John has 268 entries.
- Mary has 272 entries.
Now there could be duplicates in John and William entries
and in Mary and Elizabeth’s entries, if people had both as their first and
middle name.
It really boils down that John and Mary are very popular
names. One quarter of my children’s ancestry is Roman Catholic and these are names
of saints. All of the names were very common in the 17th through 19th
centuries.
Today, few are named John and Mary or even William and
Elizabeth. It will be interesting in 100 years to see what the most popular
name was in the 20th & 21st centuries.
#52Ancestors-Week 24: Popular Name—Mary Beats Out John
This is my fifth year working on this year-long prompt,
hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/)
at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s
Southern Family or at My
Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s
ancestors in new and exciting ways.
Copyright © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.
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