Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 December 29

= December 29 =

Most popular given name list
I'm looking at https://forebears.io/earth/forenames and I have a specific question and a general question.

The specific one is: isn't including "xiansheng" and "xiaojie" on here an error, similar to if you concluded that "Mr" and "Mrs" were popular given names?

And my general question is where can I find a list just like this, but which is more accurate and polished? I looked at List of most popular given names but unfortunately there is no global list there yet. —Keenan Pepper 02:11, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Going by the number of people who have those names it's very likely that they are the titles "Mr." and "Miss" (先生 and 小姐 respectively), which would make it inappropriate for inclusion, but without the Chinese orthography I can't say definitively. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 🎄 Happy Holidays! ⛄ 05:14, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * But even assuming these are given as names at all, for example as 先声, could they be that popular? --Lambiam 14:20, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Keenan_Pepper -- any such list is likely to be at least a little bit dodgy, since assembling it involves aggregating a large number of sources from various countries, conducted with different methodologies, covering different subsets of the national population, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 14:56, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Exactly so. See Nameberry or Telegraph (paywalled) for examples of how these are usually reported, mentioning only the top two names per country. Someone may be attempting something similar to what you are looking for, Kennan Pepper, at Wikionary (the References list should point you to individual national data, but alas I can't see China). This paper from 2011 says there is no reliable statistical source of Chinese names. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 18:01, 29 December 2020 (UTC)