Late Sixteenth Century English Given Names

Men's names listed by frequency

by Talan Gwynek
(Brian M. Scott,scott@math.csuohio.edu)
© 1994, 1999 by Brian M. Scott; all rights reserved.

For these lists all variants of a single name have been counted together. I have followed modern usage in treating Helen and Ellen as distinct names, and likewise for Pierce and Peter. Similarly, I have distinguished a name from its diminutives when modern practice does so. I have arbitrarily assumed that all four people named Frances were women and that all 86 people named Francis were men. The second column gives the total frequency of the names in the associated block both absolutely and as a percentage of the whole. The third column does the same for the cumulative frequencies. In each list I have also expressed as a percentage the frequency of each name contributing at least 5 percent to the total.

	Total Frequency of this Block	Cumulative Frequency		Total Frequency of this Block	Cumulative Frequency
John 1215 (20.3%) Thomas 805 (13.4%) William 786 (13.1%) Richard 534 (8.9%) Robert 372 (6.2%)	3712 (62.0%)	3712 (62.0%)	Roland 19 Michael 19 Arthur 18 Charles 15 Alexander 15	86 (1.4%)	5482 (91.6%)
Henry 204 George 172 Edward 169 Nicholas 129 James 114	788 (13.2%)	4500 (75.2%)	Gilbert 13 Daniel 12 Bartholomew 12 Geoffrey 11 Godfrey 11	59 (1.0%)	5541 (92.6%)
Francis 86 Christopher 80 Edmund 72 Roger 70 Peter 58	366 (6.1%)	4866 (81.3%)	Jerome 11 Martin 10 Oliver 10 Morgan 10 Reginald 10	51 (0.9%)	5592 (93.4%)
Anthony 54 Ralph 51 Walter 47 Barnard 46 Hugh 46	244 (4.1%)	5110 (85.4%)	Samuel 10 Gregory 9 Alan 9 Lewis 9 Gabriel 9	46 (0.8%)	5638 (94.2%)
Humphrey   42 Stephen 37 Phillip 34 Simon 31 Matthew 29	173 (2.9%)	5283 (88.3%)	Griffin 9 Cornelius 9 Maurice 8 Ambrose 8 Owen 8	42 (0.7%)	5680 (94.9%)
Lawrence   26 David 25 Giles 23 Andrew 20 Leonard 19	113 (1.9%)	5396 (90.1%)	Paul 8 Brian 8 Augustine 8 Vincent 8 Miles 7	39 (0.7%)	5719 (95.6%)

The following 5 names occurred 6 times each, making 0.50% of the total:

Adam, Arnold, Clement, Jasper, Valentine.

The following 5 names occurred 5 times each, making 0.42% of the total:

Abraham, Lancelot, Randolph, Sampson, Tristram.

The following 8 names occurred 4 times each, making 0.53% of the total:

Ellis, Isaac, Jenkin, Joos, Joseph, Mark, Nathaniel, Rees.

The following 14 names occurred 3 times each, making 0.70% of the total:

The following 26 names occurred twice each, making 0.87% of the total:

The following 83 names occurred once each, making 1.4% of the total:

Introduction
Feminine Names listed by frequency
Name listed alphabetically (with derivation notes)
Abbreviations and Bibliography

Notes:
[1] Each instance of this name has been counted as a man's name save for the one instance of each that clearly referred to a woman. Further research suggests that in the 16th century these names were more often borne by women than by men. It is possible that all instances of both are in fact feminine.