Joe Jr. is not an uncommon name to hear, but what about Linda Jr.?
New research shows that many men are named after their fathers, but matronymns (names for mothers and gradnmothers) are rare. The study also found those living in U.S. states most focused on "honor" were more likely to have use patronyms, a Society for Personality and Social Psychology news release reported.
"Studying naming trends can be a subtle means of peering into a society's beliefs and values without ever having to ask people to report directly about their beliefs and values," Ryan Brown of the University of Oklahoma, said.
Brown became interested in the subject when his collaborator, Mauricio Carvallo, was searching for names for his newborn daughter. The duo started to wonder if concepts such as "honor" and "reputation" affected name choice.
"For men in a typical honor culture, the kind of reputation that is highly prized is a reputation for toughness and bravery," Ryan said. "For women in a typical honor culture, the most valued reputation is a reputation for loyalty and sexual purity."
The researchers conducted two decades worth of research, and found Americans living in southern and western regions were most focused on these concepts.
The team surveyed a number of people on their feelings about honor and reputation, as well as what they would be likely (or unlikely) to name their children. They also used Social Security Administration data to identify the most popular names for both genders in each state in 1960, 1984, and 2008. They looked for trends, and what names popped up most often.
"Each state was given a patronym score and a matronym score by tallying how many of the 10 most popular names in one generation showed up again among the most popular names given to the next generation, or in the generation after that," Ryan said. "Higher scores show that baby names were being recycled from one generation to the next, and these scores showed a regional pattern to them similar to the patterns we see with other behaviors connected to honor ideology around the United States."
Southern and Western states tended to have the highest patronym scores; these states also were believed to focus heavily on honor in fields such as: "execution rates, Army recruitment levels, and suicide rates among White men and women." They also found patronyms increased in these states after 9/11.
"The same pattern was not observed, however, when it came to matronyms, which is exactly what we expected," Ryan said. "Matronyms, unlike patronyms, are not any more popular in the South and West compared to the North, and they do not predict any statewide variables to a significant degree."
This research could help explain why matronyms are so rare.
"Everyone probably knows a guy who is a 'junior,' given the exact same name as his father, and many know someone who is 'such-and-such the third,' having the same name as both his father and his grandfather," Ryan says. "But when was the last time you met a woman who had the same name as her mother, much less the same first and middle names as her mother, like Sally Anne Jones, Jr.?"
Ryan believes the data shows one of the largest gender differences still present in society.
"Women who once could only strive to work as nurses, teachers, or librarians can now aspire to be astronauts, brain surgeons, or senators," he said. "But don't expect anyone to give a girl her mother's name."
