Analysing names in the golden age of cinema part 2

General Name Discussion
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In my last post I wanted to test the theory that popular culture affects name trends especially in the golden cinema age, I proved this theory with [name_u]Shirley[/name_u] (coming at 4th) and proved it with [name_f]Betty[/name_f], and im going to continue this with the other names. I’ll start with [name_f]Mary[/name_f].

I started by doing a search of all famous [name_f]Marys[/name_f], and I found a [name_f]Mary[/name_f] who was around in the decade and she was an actress which fits with the golden age theme but after some research I found out she got a bachelors degree at Michigan university in 1932 and worked as a teacher during the great depression which ended in 1939, the end of the decade I was studying, plus I don’t think this [name_f]Mary[/name_f] was famous enough to start a naming trend. So I decided to check the others social security numbers to see if [name_f]Mary[/name_f] is a naming trend or is it a consistent trend. [name_f]Mary[/name_f] had consistently been the number one name from 1880 till 1950. This disproves my theory and [name_f]Mary[/name_f] was not affected by culture

In the next edition of analyzing names, I am going to be analyzing the year by year changes in names!

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For Mary, at least in the U.K., I’d say that the queen at the time had a big impact on the popularity of the name!

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yes I would agree, I am from the UK but I did this based on on the social security stats from the US

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What about [name_f]Mary[/name_f] [name_m]Pickford[/name_m]? She was hugely popular during the silent film era and the beginning of the talkie era, so right in that timeline you’re discussing. She was born [name_f]Gladys[/name_f] [name_u]Marie[/name_u] [name_m]Smith[/name_m], so she was also an intentional [name_f]Mary[/name_f], not someone who was named that by her parents

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I don’t think Mary’s popularity at that time can be attributed to particular celebrities. I think it was probably a combination of:

  1. [name_u]Christian[/name_u] parents (especially Catholics) using the name for religious reasons
  2. [name_u]Baby[/name_u] girls being named after relatives (which was more common back then than it is now) so common names got repeated endlessly
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