Rank uncertainty: Why the 'most popular' baby names might not be the most popular

摘要

What are the most popular first names given to newborn girls and boys? In England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) tells us that they are Amelia and Oliver (bit.ly/2osrQKx). In Germany, according to the website beliebte-vornamen.de, they are Mia and Ben (bit.ly/2osc9mx). But how certain can we be that these really are the most popular baby names? The German list of the top 500 names is based on a sample of 26% of all newborns in 2016, so we might expect some uncertainty there: after all, Mia may only be the most popular name among the sample of babies chosen. But the ONS's baby name statistics are based on all first names given to all live-born babies in a given year, so one might think that there should not be any uncertainty in the rankings of the top 100 names. However, that is not the case.