Our names play a huge part in our identity, but can they influence who we turn out to be? Are there some names that are more likely to end up on a judge’s docket?
We wanted to find out if a name can make someone more likely to become a criminal, so we made Freedom of Information requests to police forces around the country, asking for the names of people that were charged with crimes in the last two years, so we could discover the names most likely to commit crimes.
In total, we received 42,671 names from various police forces around the country, allowing us to work out which names had the most criminal charges attached to them. The top 65 names were traditionally male names with these being the top ten:
While the male names account for the vast majority of arrests, we also wanted to know which traditionally female names were most often on the wrong side of the law:
When we look at the UK’s current most popular names, how do they measure up?
We made Freedom of Information requests to police forces around the UK asking for data regarding the first names of those who had been charged with a crime in the 19/20 financial year within their area. Of the constabularies we made requests to, 17 were able to send data, amounting to a total of 42,671 names. We then took the total number of people charged with each name, giving us our results.
When looking at the UK’s most popular names, we took the top five names for baby boys and baby girls in the UK in 2019.
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