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Archiver > YORKSGEN > 2005-08 > 1123761448


From: "Roy Stockdill" <>
Subject: Re: Common forename?
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:46:59 +0000
In-Reply-To: <00ac01c59e5d$95ba5150$0301a8c0@AIK3>


> From: "ANDREW RIDING" <>

> In your collective experience how common would you say that the forename
> Mark was around 1790-1810? (In Yorkshire/generally)>

Surname Atlas is a superb little program on CD for finding the
popularity of any surname or forename, based on data from the 1881
census. In the forename section it also has a remarkable feature for
plotting the popularity of any forename, based on the number of
people holding it born in any particular decade and appearing in the
1881 census data.

In 1881 there were 23,633 Marks. Of these, the greatest number,
2,714, were in the West Riding, followed by Lancashire with 2,332, so
clearly it was a popular Christian name in the north of England. The
largest number of Marks were in Dewsbury, Bradford, Leeds and
Sheffield (Surname Atlas also has a feature breaking the data down
into Poor Law Unions, on which the enumeration districts were based).

When you look at the number of Marks born in each decade, the figures
are as follows.....

1791-1801 86 (but obviously not many people born in that decade were
still alive in 1881)
1801-11 437
1811-21 1114
1821-31 1739
1831-41 2661
1841-51 3573
1851-61 4259
1861-71 4659
1871-81 5036

Roy Stockdill
Web page of the Guild of One-Name Studies:- www.one-name.org
Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History:- www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde

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