Trust the British to "enjoy" their names....
Cock, Daft, Death, Smellie, not to mention Gotobed, Shufflebottom and Jelly: they are all surnames that would have caused their owners considerable embarrassment over the years. A new analysis of British surnames reveals how names with rude overtones have seen the sharpest decline over the past 120 years as their owners have changed them to something more innocuous.
A comparison of the 2008 population — using data from a variety of sources — with the first census in 1881 shows that the number of Cocks has shrunk by 75 per cent, while the number of people called Balls or Daft has fallen by more than 50 per cent.
Genealogy, and especially British genealogy, is a lot of fun, and has become a major hobby of mine. Part of the fun is finding all the strange surnames you come across as you sort through the records.
David Hey, author of Family Names and Family History, said that ridiculous names were often more harmless than they appeared. " ‘Bottom’ names were from farms at the bottom of a valley. In the Middle Ages ‘daft’ meant meek. It was a perfectly acceptable name."
Hey's book is quite fun (you can read it through Google Books) with all kinds of interesting stories, including one on my rare surname (used by only about 300 people worldwide).
Of course as some surnames have disappeared in the UK, new ones have been added, mostly by immigration:
The fastest-growing surname in Britain is Zhang, which has grown from 123 in 1996 to 5,804 in 2008. It is followed by four other Chinese names — Wang, Yang, Huang and Lin.
I guess that is not too surprising as most Chinese have one of only a relatively few surnames. For example, 3 surnames: Li, Zhang and Wang are used by 250 million Chinese!
As for first names, the Brits are in danger of losing some popular names of old. A recent study compared names from a hundred years ago to now.
The study found that Norman and Gertrude are the top male and female baby names that have fallen victim to the passing of time. Gertrude failed to register at all in recent years (a 100% decline since 1907) whilst Norman has recorded a decline in popularity of a staggering 99.85% over the last century putting it top of the boys endangered names list.
The results reveal a clear generational shift - suggesting that names like Norman, which can be traced back to the Norman conquest of 1066, and Gertrude, the name of a Seventh Century Saint, could soon be lost forever. Names that just missed out on top ten placings include Albert, Sidney and Fred on the boys side and Margaret, Annie and Florence for the girls.
To add to that there is now a marked decline in the number of Dicks (Richards).
Perhaps one of the most surprising results was the fact that Richard which was the UK's most popular name 200 years ago, could soon be heading the same way as Norman and Percy. The report notes that the name is 19th on the boys' endangered list, having witnessed a steady decline over the last century (66% fall) and shows no sign of regaining popularity.