The #1 most popular given name, male and female (provided information was available), in each of these countries.
In general, the popular local (Romanized) spelling is used, though some very common alternate spellings are accepted for some names.
If a name is used in more than one language or culture, I did my best to link them all, but there were a lot of names included so comment if I missed something.
Some of the data (most) reflects popular baby names in the most recent year, other data reflects the most popular name across an entire population. Apologies for the inconsistency.
haha... really? There are something like 6 or 8 different acceptable spellings for Muhammad on the quiz. More than for any other name. Mohammed, Muhammad, Mohammad, Mohamet etc.
I'm sure if I had any info for Ghana the most popular name would be Kwame. I used to work with a bunch of guys from Ghana and fully 2/3 of them were named Kwame.
Thanks! :D and... oops.. yeah, I missed that. I tried to match up the many various spellings of different names whenever possible. Thanks for the tip. I'll fix it.
I thought the most common name in India to be something like Suresh, Kumar, Patel, Singh, Lakshmi or something like that. Now I know that it is Aarav and Saanvi. Thanks for informing
Alejandro is matched up. Luka and Lukas are not, I'll see about fixing that.
Concerning the name Kim, first of all this is a family name not a given name. That's the main reason it is not on this quiz. Though it *does* show up here: Most Common Surnames.
Also, I think your stats are off. It's my understanding that roughly 60% of the people in Korea have one of three family names: Kim, Pak/Park, and Lee. Of those three very common family names, Kim is the most common, but I think it's still less than 25% of the country. To my knowledge, Nguyen is the most common family name per capita in any country in the world. Around 25% of everyone in Vietnam has that name.
If you find good data on any of these countries I can add them. Some countries in Africa haven't had a census in 30+ years. Some have never had one. There is little or no data available on the prevalence of various names in most of these countries. I'm pretty sure the most common name in Ghana is Kwame but I couldn't find data to support this. I'm about 98-99% sure that Mohammed is the most common name in Bangladesh, though I could not find data for that country, either.
Maybe Nora or Nour or something like that. There are multiple type-ins accepted for many of these names including different versions from different cultures, if those same names also appear on the quiz. Though it has been a long time since I updated this and I know there are some things I missed.
I'm interested in the source for the Japan names - I've never had a student named Yua. I have plenty named Yui, which many Japanese insurance sites list as the most popular name. Typo, perhaps?
hm... you might be right. I've never spent much time in Japan but I have also heard the name Yui before. I got this from Wikipedia, there could have been a mistake on their end. I don't think it was on mine. I remember seeing that name on the Wiki page as I was making this quiz.
I dug back through the source material on wikipedia and I think I discovered the sticking point - more girls were named Yui in 2013 (I understand you were most likely using the 2012 data when this quiz was made), but the thing is you can write Yui in a variety of ways, using different kanji. In fact, since it's a popular name, the kanji being used have probably proliferated to help distinguish a child from her classmates, much as Yoko can be written in at least ten different ways.
More people named their daughters Yua using 結愛 than Yui using 結衣 (the most common kanji choice for Yui), so that became the "top" name on RocketNews24, from which wikipedia made their list, even though Yui (written any way) is twice as popular as Yua (written any way). A linguistic quirk.
I was just working with the data I found. If you have something that gives a girls' and boys' name, then I can add it to the growing list of things I need to fix/update on this quiz, and change it whenever I get around to doing that.
i tried like 40 variations of yusef, yuzef, yuzif, yousef yousuf etc etc. Of all the ones I tried I think atelast 3/4 are ways they are actually spelled ( i ve seen it spelled many different ways)
Great quiz :) I got 93 which I was quite happy with. Although that was mostly through the European/western culture countries, I was woefully ignorant of a lot of the Asian names outside of Mohammed and Fatima!
Oh, and it seems like Lukas hasn't been matched up with Luke/Luka and Alejandro with Alexander/Aleksandar.
Concerning the name Kim, first of all this is a family name not a given name. That's the main reason it is not on this quiz. Though it *does* show up here: Most Common Surnames.
Also, I think your stats are off. It's my understanding that roughly 60% of the people in Korea have one of three family names: Kim, Pak/Park, and Lee. Of those three very common family names, Kim is the most common, but I think it's still less than 25% of the country. To my knowledge, Nguyen is the most common family name per capita in any country in the world. Around 25% of everyone in Vietnam has that name.
My suggestions: Gabriela should work for Gabrielle (it's the spanish version), and you should mash Lukas up with all the Luke and Luka stuff
More people named their daughters Yua using 結愛 than Yui using 結衣 (the most common kanji choice for Yui), so that became the "top" name on RocketNews24, from which wikipedia made their list, even though Yui (written any way) is twice as popular as Yua (written any way). A linguistic quirk.
Great quiz, kal, a real challenge.