Pre-1600 English Brass Inscriptions

Men's Names Sorted by Frequency

by Julian Goodwyn (Janell K. Lovelace)

The names analyzed here were taken from funerary brasses in England, and range in date from 1107 to 1600. The second column records the number of times the name appears in the data. The third column is the percentage of the total sample represented by that name (for names that represent more than 1% of the sample), and the last column is the cumulative total percentage of the names listed to that point in the table. Frequencies were taken from Julian Goodwyn's paper in the 1997 KWHS proceedings. These numbers show how little variety there was in naming in this period: The ten most common names were shared by 82.5% of the male population.

John 494 29.7 29.7
Thomas 236 14.2 43.9
William 230 13.8 57.7
Richard 121 7.3 65.0
Robert 107 6.4 71.4
Henry 57 3.4 74.8
Nicholas 43 2.6 77.4
Edward 31 1.9 79.3
Walter 28 1.7 81.0
Roger 25 1.5 82.5
George 21 1.3 83.8
Edmund 20 1.2 85.0
Ralph 19 1.1 86.1
James 14
Philip 14
Geoffrey 11
Anthony 10
Christopher 10
Peter 10
Simon 10
Francis 8
Hugh 8
Reginald 8
Humphrey 6
Matthew 6
Adam 4
Alexander 4
Arthur 4
Antony 3
Giles 3
Michael 3

The following names occur twice in the data: Baldwin, Bartholomew, David, Drew, Edmond, Gerard, Godfrey, Guy, Gyles, Harry, Luke, Morys, Nichol, Piers, Rauf, Stephen.

The following names occur once in the data: Alan, Alex, Andrew, Arnald, Arnold, Barnard, Batholomew, Benedict, Bernard, Bryan, Charles, Christpher, Cyriac, Erasmus, Esmour, Esperaunce, Ethelbert, Ethelred, Eustace, Folke, Gabriel, Gauwyn, Geerardt, Gilbert, Griffin, Hercules, Hewrey, Ingham, Ivo, Jakys, Jeffrey, Jenlyns, Jon, Laurence, Lawrence, Leonard, Lewis, Martin, Mathye, Maurice, Nathaniel, Nichole, Nicolas, Olever, Oliver, Olyver, Pers, Philippe, Powle, Raff, Raffe, Ralf, Rauff, Rauffe, Raulin, Reynard, Reynold, Rowland, Stehen, Steven, Symond, Thames, Tomas, Valentine, Vyncent, Warin, Wilham, Zacheus.


edited by Arval Benicoeur from the web version of the article.