First names in Germany as carriers of social information.How can social information be encoded in names?

Abstract

In addition to the identification function carried by first names, first names are associated with a lot of information about the person and their social environment because the choice of name is guided by the life experiences of the parents, immersed in a social context. The choice is influenced by regional and temporal circumstances, family traditions, models of conduct, religion, membership of social groups and, today more than ever, by aesthetic aspects. Therefore, a first name always carries social information about gender, age or affiliation to a social group. Within a culture and within an era, this information is perceived in a similar way. 'I fear  of God',  Gottlieb 'love of God' are perceived as pietist names; Mandy,  Peggy,  Enrico as typical names of the German Democratic Republic (GDR); Adolf  and  Horst  as names of the time of Nazism; Ali,  Mohamed  and  Aishe as foreign names. What about the other features? "The Image of Names" research is presented on the perception of these names, the core of which is an online survey. The survey captures the individual effect of a series of names with respect to connotation pairs located in a semantic differential. The pairs of connotations relate to the meaning of the name itself, as well as to the attributions to the respective alleged bearers of the name. Among other things, it explores the perception of euphony, religiosity, appearance and social status. As early as the 1970s and 1980s, studies were in Germany indicating that certain character traits were also perceived in all areas. The corpus of names discussed here is higher (more than 2000 names) and large amounts of data are collected (150,000 questionnaires in November 2016). From the collected data, graphical impact profiles, so-called  onograms,are calculated, showing whether and in which areas the names have connotations with general effect within the German-speaking world. The results can be compared with the statistical data of the first names.

Keywords: Socioanthropymy; perception of first names; onograms, Germany, 20th and 21st centuries.