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.