Hyphenated names are one of the many trends currently popular in Britain at the moment. In the last two years I have posted full lists of both the 2009 and 2010 hyphen names in England and Wales.
This year, I have decided to delve deeper into the data to look at what the statistics can tell us.
The England and Wales 2011 data only gives gives us the names given to 3 babies or more. This equates to 6083 distinct names for boys and 7575 distinct names for girls.
Boys:
Of the 6083 individual boys' names recorded in the 2011 data, 279 (4.6%) are hyphenated. The 277 names were registered for a total of 1996 babies. This trend has been increasing in recent years.
- 2009: 198 hyphen names given to 1194 babies.
- 2010: 240 hyphen names given to 1574 babies.
- 2011: 279 hyphen names given to 1776 babies.
Girls:
7575 individual names are recorded for girls in 2011 and 968 (12.8%) of those are hyphenated names. These 968 names were distributed across 10,655 babies, and also shows an increase from previous years:
- 2009: 747 hyphen names given to 7264 babies.
- 2010: 897 hyphen names given to 9045 babies.
- 2011: 968 hyphen names given to 10,625 babies.
Most popular hyphen names
Name:
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No. of births:
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Name:
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No. of births:
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Most commonly hyphenated first name:
Hundreds of distinct first names have been hyphenated but many of the most common combinations, unsurprisingly, feature a first name from the Top 100. The main trend is the use of a two-syllable name, usually one that ends in an "ee" sound. The most popular first elements out of all those listed in 2011 are as follows:
First Element:
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No. of names:
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First Element:
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No. of names:
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Most common second name:
The key to the second element of hyphen names is a swift lyrical sound. The majority of second elements are one-syllable names, and many contain an "ay" sound: May, Grace, Rae, Jane, Jayne, Jay, Paige, Faith, Kate, James, Jay, Ray. The most popular second elements out of all those listed in 2011 are as follows:
Second Element:
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No. of names:
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Second Element:
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No. of names:
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Unisex hyphen names:
These names appear on both boys and girls:
Billy-Joe / Billie-Jo
Bobby-Joe / Bobbi-Jo
Charlie-Ray / Charlie-Rae
Frankie-Lee / Frankie-Leigh, Frankie-Lea
Jamie-Lee
Click this link to view the complete list of hyphen names listed in the data for England and Wales in 2011:
Hyphen Names 2011