







In 1377-1381, the Hundred Years wars have been raging for forty years, and Edward III has just died after his 50-year reign, leaving his grandson, Richard, as heir.

Below are the top 50 national totals for first names for men and women living in 1377-81 in England, collated by George Redmonds in Christian Names in Local and Family History (2004).

His frequency tables have been compiled from male names from 10 counties and female names from 10 counties in the Poll Tax returns of 1377-81. 1000 male and 1000 female names were counted from each county and have been combined to produce a national total of 10,000 names for each gender.

For his overall ranks, Redmonds has not included any male names with totals under three or female names with totals under nine. An examination of some of the rarer regional variations will be looked at in a later post.

As Redmonds point out, "Because those who were being taxed were adults, the names testify to practices a generation earlier."

Redmonds has also given each name a "classification of popularity", listed below:

1 John 3532 Extremely popular 1 Alice 1714

E xtremely popular



2 William 1834 2 Agnes 1433 3 Thomas 945 Very popular 3 Joan 1239 4 Richard 831 4 Matilda 654

Very popular



5 Robert 741 5 Isabel 465 6 Henry 334 Popular 6 Margaret 435 7 Roger 306 7 Emme 409 8 Walter 240 8 Marg' * 281



Popular





9 Adam 178 Quite popular 9 Margery 279 10 Nicholas 163 10 Ellen 278 11 Hugh 104 11 Julian 238 12 Geoffrey 85 12 Cecile 229 13 Simon 81 13 Christine 208 14 Ralph 69 14 Katherine 178









Quite popular















15 Peter 62 15 Edith 142 16 Stephen 50 Infrequent 16 Amice 125 17 Gilbert 34 17 Elizabeth 112 17 Philip 34 18 Beatrice 110 19 Reginald 32 19 Magot * 99 20 David 29 20 Sarah 78 21 Laurence 27 21 Sybil 74 22 James 20 22 Felice 72 23 Edmund 19 22 Christian 72 24 Alan 16 24 Avice 71 25 Denis 15 25 Denise 64 25 Michael 15 26 Is' * 62 25 Alexander 15 27 Isolde 60 28 Matthew 12 28 Lucy 46



















Infrequent





















28 Andrew 12 29 Petronille 39 30 Edus (?) 10 29 Rose 36 31 Giles 8 Rare 29 Mariot * 34 31 Benedict 8 32 Mabel 30 33 Edward 7 32 Lettice 30 34 Luke 6 34 Constance 27 34 George 6 35 Anne 24 34 Gregory 6 35 Idony 24 34 Clement 6 37 Eve 22 38 Elias 5 38 Annabel 21 38 Bartholomew 5 39 Marion 20 40 Martin 4 40 Eleanor 19 40 Jena 4 41 Ibot * 18 40 Nigel 4 41 Mag' * 18 43 Randolph 3 43 Evita * 14 43 Madok 3 44 Clemence 13 43 Maurice 3 45 Agatha 12 43 Griffin 3 46 Helwise 11 43 Gervase 3 46 Godelena 11 43 Eyvyn 3 48 Lora 10 43 Hamond 3 49 Mary 9 Rare



43 Stacey 3 49 Margr' * 9

* "The evidence shows that clerks readily used abbreviations that could stand for more than one name and, since these cannot be identified, the totals in a few cases are seriously affected. The most obvious problems are Marg' for either Margaret or Margery and Is' which could be for either Isabel or Isolde. Less important numerically was 'Cris' which could be for either Christian or Christine, two names that are usually listed separately in dictionaries. There may have been a distinction, for the daughter of Robert de Gowtby of Noseley in Leicestershire was first names Christiana and then Crystina. Perhaps the spellings represented scribal preferences, since Christine was particularly frequent in the south coast counties of Kent and Dorset but missing from some counties in the Midlands and North, were Christian was more usual.

The clerks also employed many diminutives, and it has been thought safer to list these variations independently. Magot is the most important of these but Mariot, Ibot, Evita, Colet, Evot, Annot and Ammot are others that affect the overall counts. This helps to explain why the list of women's names is longer than the men's but, even if we ignore the abbreviations and diminutives, there were still more female names in use, and more of them were 'popular'."





