Is Anna the most devoted?
But the tendency to vary the spelling confuses the classification. So Anna, with all its spelling variants (Hannah, Ana, Hana, Hanna, Hanaa, Anah….), would be the most given female name by far, followed by Mia, 13th according to INSEE, rising second place. with its variants (Mÿa, Miyah, Miah…), calculated by the Figaro data service.
Until 1993, “the civil registry could correct the spelling of names, but after that he had to write it with the spelling requested by the parents,” explains sociologist Baptiste Coulmont, a professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris Saclay. “Today, more than 12,000 names are listed in the Names File. In the 19th century, 50 names were enough to name 75% of boys or girls. Today, the most is given to only 1% of girls born in a year. In the 1970s, Kristof represented 4% of male births,” explains the author of the work “Sociology of Names”.
Sad rating
The choice of singularity is explained by the fact that today the first name is used to identify someone in a group: class, workplace, where until the 70s people were called by their last name, adds the sociologist. To this variety is added an increasing variety of spelling; Aliyah goes from 40th place to 7th if we add 22 different spellings (Aliyah, Alliah..). Elyo (Elyo, Helio…) rises from 31st place to 9th place, according to Le Figaro.
Elodie named her children Loiza, 9 years old, and Ive, 5 years old. “Our last name is common, and my husband, Frederik, has the same name in the neighborhood. My first name was in the class of two or three girls. We were looking for original names,” he explains. “We liked Ewen, but we were afraid there would be too many, so we changed the letter to stand out more,” explains the 41-year-old employee.
“Social Tattoo”
“The number of names in use is an indicator used to measure the level of personality of a country. People want a unique and different name for their child, who they see as a unique individual,” explains Jean-Francois Amadier, professor at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University. Moreover, due to the phonetic adaptation of foreign alphabets, migration flows “give rise to a very large number of first names with varied spellings”.
For his part, Baptiste Kuhlmon notes that “the idea that spelling is sacred is important among highly educated people. Some attach less importance to it and write the name however they want.”
Originality does not come without risk. “Parents want to do well, but scientific studies have shown that first names with non-traditional spellings can cause rejection in others because the human brain doesn’t like complicated things,” says HEC behavioral sciences professor Anne- Lor Selyer. “Matilde risks spending her life introducing herself as Matilda without the H.”