Some Methodological Issues in Quantitative Onomastics

Abstract

Ihave been engaged for some time now in an elaborate research project devoted to the statistical analysis of the first names Israelis have been giving their children over the course of the last one hundred years.* (The first wave of returnee-settlers arrived back in 1882 in what was then Turkish Palestine.)The source on which this research is based is the Population Registry maintained by the Interior Ministry of the State of Israel.In the course of preparing this vast data-set for statistical analysis I have been confronted by various methodological problems and dilemmas, some of which are general and instructive enough to seem worth sharing with onomastic specialists at large, especially with those who have an interest in the quantitative treatment of names.A few words about the rationale for this study before I launch into the methodological discussion proper.I undertook this research out of an interest not in first names as such, but in what first names can reveal about the people who select them to identify their children.What is more, my interest is not in the individual name-givers, but in the larger social formations to which they belong, such as social groups (classes, ethnic groups), social categories (e.g.gender), and generations.I am an historical sociologist, and my principal objective in this r~search is to establish on firm objective grounds those continuities and changes across generations whic~can be revealed by an analysis of over-time trends in patterns of name-giving.To be sure, the study of first names, even if carried out at the aggregate level, can only reveal a part, perhaps even only a small part, of the cultural characteristics of generations.But at leastthe information so obtained will be firm and incontrovertible, thus providing a clear factual basis from which to either challenge it or build on it.This is more than can be said for the informational bases on which *This research was supported by the Pinchas Sapir Center for Social Development, Tel Aviv University.

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