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Re: Steven
In the 1993 edition of The Guinness Book of Names by Leslie Dunkling, the number of births per 10,000 in England and Wales is given for a selection of years between 1950 and 1990. The figures for the two main spellings of Stephen/Steven are as follows:1950: Stephen 268, Steven 32
1955: Stephen 568, Steven 132
1960: Stephen 454, Steven 202
1965: Stephen 380, Steven 178
1970: Stephen 282, Steven 195
1975: Stephen 233, Steven 219
1980: Stephen 172, Steven 160
1985: Stephen 156, Steven 186
1990: Stephen 102, Steven 96So Steven was a bit more common in England & Wales than Stephen in 1985, but Stephen was ahead in the other years of this selection.
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Interesting - thank you! It's difficult to know what to do in cases like that, isn't it? Should these names be counted together or apart? Perhaps the tedious answer is the best from a scholarly point of view: two sets of stats, one list for all the variants counted together, and one counting them separately.
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