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Help[Facts] Question
For the US names list, in older years there are names on the male charts that are feminine and on the female chart that are masculine. Not unisex names, stuff like David and Katherine. Could these be statistical errors or just babies being given those names?
When everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself - Layne Staley
When everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself - Layne Staley
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Replies
Yes, it could be an error. No data source is free of errors, and the SSA data are no exception to this.
There are some known errors in the SSA data set:
The great baby name glitch of 1969, putting Alexandr (Alexandra trunkated to 8 characters) in the female charts, see http://www.nancy.cc/2007/11/08/the-great-baby-name-glitch-of-1989-christop-alexandr-elizabet/
A lot of Koreans born in Kansas (coding error, KA mistaken as a state code), see http://www.nancy.cc/2015/07/24/glitch-alert-korea-coded-kansas-ssa-data/
There are also non-names occurring in the data, like Unnamed, Notnamed, Unknown, Infant, Girl, Boy, Babygirl, or Babyboy.
There are probably more known errors.
There are some known errors in the SSA data set:
The great baby name glitch of 1969, putting Alexandr (Alexandra trunkated to 8 characters) in the female charts, see http://www.nancy.cc/2007/11/08/the-great-baby-name-glitch-of-1989-christop-alexandr-elizabet/
A lot of Koreans born in Kansas (coding error, KA mistaken as a state code), see http://www.nancy.cc/2015/07/24/glitch-alert-korea-coded-kansas-ssa-data/
There are also non-names occurring in the data, like Unnamed, Notnamed, Unknown, Infant, Girl, Boy, Babygirl, or Babyboy.
There are probably more known errors.
This message was edited 12/11/2019, 8:24 AM
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There are a lot of sex-coding errors, and they are more prominent the further back in time one goes in the data.
You have to remember that Social Security didn't exist until the 1930s and so data for people born before that date comes from information entered as adults. In fact, until some time in the 1980s most Americans didn't get social security numbers at birth -- I myself wasn't registered in the Social Security system until 1967 when I got my first summer job as a teenager.
Also, whenever anyone's name is changed as an adult, it gets changed in the Social Security records.
There are even errors in the birth years. Just by quickly checking the top names, one can see there are way more people in the SSA data with the nice round birth year of "1900" than there are with the birth years of 1899 or 1901. A lot of people in the year 1900 data set were probably not actually born in that calendar year but just wrote down "1900" as an estimate when they applied for Social Security as adults.
You have to remember that Social Security didn't exist until the 1930s and so data for people born before that date comes from information entered as adults. In fact, until some time in the 1980s most Americans didn't get social security numbers at birth -- I myself wasn't registered in the Social Security system until 1967 when I got my first summer job as a teenager.
Also, whenever anyone's name is changed as an adult, it gets changed in the Social Security records.
There are even errors in the birth years. Just by quickly checking the top names, one can see there are way more people in the SSA data with the nice round birth year of "1900" than there are with the birth years of 1899 or 1901. A lot of people in the year 1900 data set were probably not actually born in that calendar year but just wrote down "1900" as an estimate when they applied for Social Security as adults.
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