Thursday, December 6, 2012

There Used To Be Something About Mary

The Atlantic features this:
Each year I mark the continued calamitous decline of Mary as a girls' name in the United States. Not to be over-dramatic, but in the recorded history of names, nothing this catastrophic has ever happened before. Mary was the most common name given to girls every year from the beginning of record-keeping (at least back to 1800) through 1961 (except for a six-year dip to #2, behind Linda).
And then it happened. In 2011, according to the latest report from the Social Security Administration (SSA), Mary fell three more places, to 112th. In absolute numbers, the number of girls given the name Mary at birth has fallen 94 percent since 1961. Here is the trend:


My explanation is that for much of our history, Catholics were a growing portion of our population, and naming girls Mary was ridiculously common, and had the added effect of differentiating them from Protestants.  Thr Post-Tridentine Church emphasized Mary seemingly to spite the Calvinists and stake out their differences.  I think this trend fell off with suburbanization moving Catholics out of their ghettos and into neighborhoods with Protestants, and it accelerated after Vatican II with the drop off of many traditional Marian devotions.  Anyway, it is a trend I've paid attention to also, so I found the story interesting.

No comments:

Post a Comment