Below is text from one section of Douglas Galbi’s work, “Sense in Communication.” This work includes text and images. Some images may be missing (due to use restrictions) or improperly formatted below. The full work in pdf format, as well as other text sections, are available at www.galbithink.org
Appendix A
Historical Popularity of the Name Mary
The scholarly literature on names contains some mistakes regarding the historical popularity of the name Mary. One authority asserts:
Mary is the most popular and enduring of all female Christian names, being the name of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, who has been the subject of a cult from earliest times. Consequently, the name was extremely common among early Christians, several saints among them, and by the Middle Ages was well established in every country in Europe at every level of society. It has been enduringly popular ever since, it popularity having been almost completely undisturbed by the vagaries of fashion that affect other names. [1]
Another authority states that use of the name Mary in England increased slowly from the end of the twelfth century through the next three centuries, but “suffered an eclipse after the Reformation and was seldom used during Elizabeth’s reign.”[2] These statements
Table A1 Various English Name Samples (% females named Mary)
|
||
|
Birth Year, Location |
Percent |
Sample Size |
|
1200, Essex |
0.9% |
1407 |
|
1210, South England |
0.0% |
173 |
|
1270, Rutland |
0.0% |
206 |
|
1300, Lincoln |
0.6% |
1213 |
|
1350, Hereford |
0.7% |
576 |
|
1350, Yorkshire |
0.2% |
1794 |
|
1560, Canterbury |
7.3% |
661 |
|
1560 Gloucester |
3.2% |
3745 |
|
|
|
|
|
1620, Yorkshire |
16.7% |
342 |
|
1670, Yorkshire |
20.6% |
228 |
|
1720, Yorkshire |
25.7% |
413 |
|
1770, Yorkshire |
22.8% |
381 |
|
|
|
|
|
1625, England |
17.0% |
n.a. |
|
1675, England |
20.5% |
n.a. |
|
1725, England |
20.0% |
n.a. |
|
1775, England |
24.0% |
n.a. |
contradict the best currently available evidence about the popularity of Mary in England.
Mary was not a popular name in England prior to the Reformation. During the Anglo-Saxon period in England (c. 600 to 1066), the name Mary was not used. A royal use of the name Mary is recorded in Scotland at the end of the eleventh century, and the first recorded use of Mary in England dates from the end of the twelfth century.[3] From 1200 to 1350, the share of females named Mary was less than 1%. About 1350, Mary ranked about twenty-fifth in popularity.[4] The popularity of the most popular name at that time, Alice, was about 22%. The popularity of Mary rose over the next two centuries, but the name’s popularity was probably less than 3% prior to the English Reformation (1535).[5]
The situation in Europe varied considerably. In Paris in 1292-1300, the share of females named Mary was 6.7%.[6] Maria and Marina were the two most popular names in Galicia (on the northwest coast of Spain) during the eighth to the thirteenth centuries.[7] By the fifteenth century, Maria and Marina accounted for 8% and 6%, respectively, of female names in Galicia.[8] In the area now northwestern Ukraine, Maria accounted for 10.2% of female give names in 1484.[9] In Hungary, Italy, southern France, and other parts of Spain,
use of forms of Mary may have been rare up to the end of the sixteenth century.[10]
|
Table A2 Trends in Location-Consistent Samples (% females named Mary)
|
||||||
|
England |
Warwick County, England |
|||||
|
Birth Years |
Rank |
Share |
Birth Years |
Rank |
Share |
Sample Size |
|
|
|
|
1381-1405 |
21 |
0.3% |
585 |
|
|
|
|
1465-1509 |
13 |
0.9% |
802 |
|
|
|
|
1513-1525 |
10 |
2.8% |
109 |
|
1538-1549 |
7 |
4% |
1539-1552 |
7 |
6.7% |
224 |
|
1550-1559 |
4 |
10% |
1553-1558 |
3 |
12.7% |
63 |
|
1560-1579 |
7 |
4% |
1559-1582 |
8 |
4.1% |
991 |
|
1580-1589 |
4 |
10% |
1583-1603 |
6 |
8.5% |
1011 |
|
1590-1599 |
3 |
13% |
|
|
|
|
|
1600-1629 |
2 |
15% |
1604-1624 |
3 |
12.9% |
1173 |
|
1630-1649 |
2 |
15% |
1625-1648 |
2 |
17.6% |
1429 |
|
1650-1659 |
1 |
15% |
1649-1658 |
1 |
22.8% |
241 |
The popularity of Mary increased in England after the start of the Reformation. The name Mary was more popular at the end of Elizabeth’s rein (1603) than at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Mary increased in popularity during Queen Mary I’s reign (1553-1558), fell during the early part of Elizabeth I’s rule, but then rose again in the later part of it. The popularity of Mary continued to increase through to the end of the eighteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, the popularity of Mary in England was about 24%.[11]
|
Table A3 Northumberland and Cumbria Counties in Northern England (% females named Mary)
|
|||
|
Est. Birth Years |
Rank |
Share |
Sample Size |
|
1509-1530 |
10 |
1.8% |
271 |
|
1540-1570 |
10 |
2.1% |
3581 |
|
1571-1600 |
8 |
4.2% |
5654 |
|
1601-1630 |
6 |
7.5% |
5076 |
|
1631-1660 |
5 |
10.8% |
4657 |
|
1661-1690 |
3 |
14.4% |
4717 |
|
1691-1720 |
1 |
17.1% |
3957 |
|
1721-1750 |
2 |
17.3% |
3357 |
|
1751-1780 |
1 |
18.2% |
4098 |
|
1781-1810 |
1 |
19.6% |
3569 |
After the Reformation, the popularity of Mary also increased greatly in predominately Catholic European countries. From the sixteenth to the seventeenth century in Hungary, the popularity of the name Mária increased from less than 1.6% to 6.2%.[12] In Vixen, France, the number of females with a given name including the name Marie rose from 15.8% (years 1590-99) to 68.4% (years 1740-49).[13] The increase in use of the name Marie roughly coincided with increasing use of two first names, one of which was most often Marie. Beginning in the sixteenth century in Italy, and spreading to other southern European countries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, some men also began including the name Mary in a multi-name given name.[14]
The popularity of Mary in England fell after the Industrial Revolution. Part of this fall went with a strong general trend toward name personalization, which reduced sharply the popularity of the most popular names.[15] By 1994, the most popular female name, Rebecca, accounted for just 3.7% of female names. Mary, however, also fell in relative popularity. Mary was the most popular female name in England from 1800 to 1880, and was also the most popular female name again in 1925. But by 1994, the popularity rank of Mary had fallen to 38 and its popularity to 0.6%. In mundane activities of normal life, the name Mary was probably spoken about forty times less often at the end of the twentieth century than at the end of the eighteenth.[16]
|
Table A4 England and Wales Census Data (% females named Mary)
|
|
|
Birth Year |
Share |
|
1800 |
23.9% |
|
1810 |
22.2% |
|
1820 |
20.4% |
|
1830 |
19.6% |
|
1840 |
18.7% |
|
1850 |
18.0% |
|
1860 |
16.3% |
|
1870 |
13.3% |
|
1880 |
10.6% |
|
|
|
|
1900 |
5.1% |
|
1925 |
6.7% |
|
|
|
|
1944 |
4.2% |
|
1954 |
3.6% |
|
1964 |
1.8% |
|
1974 |
1.2% |
|
1984 |
0.7% |
|
1994 |
0.6% |
[1] Hanks and Hodges (1990) p. 228.
[2] Withycombe (1977) p. 211.
[3] Id.
[4] For the 1350 Hereford and Yorkshire samples in Table A1 infra, Mary ranked 21 and 28, respectively.
[5] See Tables A1-A3, infra.
[6] Michaëlsson (1927) Table 3, p. 62.
[7] Boullón and Tato (1999) p. 40.
[8] Id. p. 25.
[9] Mitterauer (1993) p. 289.
[10] Wilson (1998) pp. 188, 192.
[11] Tables A1 and A4. As Table A3 indicates, the popularity in Northumberland and Cumbria was about 20%.
[12] Kálmán (1978) p. 50.
[13] Dupâquier (1980).
[14] Wilson (1998) p. 192.
[15] Galbi (2001b).
[16] That is an economic measure of a reduction in shared symbolic experience associated with the name Mary. See Galbi (2001b).