832 On some Curiosities and Statistics of Parish Registers. 



I have been roaming, I will return to my own village, and give a 

 few statistics — to be taken for as much as they are worth. 



It has been stated by a high authority that " in scarcely any 

 country in the world is there so great similarity of surname as in 

 England,'' and if this means (as I believe it is intended to do) so 

 few surnames, the records of Cherhill certainly bear out the statement. 

 There is one name (and that a very uncommon one — in fact I had 

 never heard it in my life until I came to Cherhill) which belongs to 

 eighty out of the one thousand six hundred and thirty-six persons 

 whose baptisms are here registered ; and adding the thirteen times 

 in which it appears with slightly varied spelling, the number of times 

 in which it occurs in the register would be no less than ninety- three ; 

 i.e., once in every seventeen-and-a-half entries. Nine surnames 

 occur more than forty times each, and together take up more than 

 one fifth of the whole number. Twenty-three surnames occur more 

 than twenty times each. One hundred and seventeen surnames 

 occur more than once. And of one hundred and nineteen surnames 

 there is only a single entry. The whole number of different sur- 

 names recorded is two hundred and fifty-nine. 



Of Christian names in the same entries there are one hundred and 

 sixty-four, viz. : male names proper, sixty-one ; surnames given as 

 Christian names, twenty-one; total eighty-two. The number of 

 females, curiously enough, is exactly equal, viz. : Christian names 

 proper, seventy-two ; surnames given as Christian names, ten ; total, 

 eighty-two. And what is more curious still is that the number of 

 the two sexes is exactly equal in these entries, viz. : eight hundred 

 and eighteen of each.' With regard to the number of times that 

 each name appears in the Cherhill books, John leads the way among 



• This is, I need scarcely say, not the ordinary proportion, which is in Great 

 Britain one hundred and four males to every hundred females, And in every 

 other country in Europe, with the single exception of Sweden, the disproportion 

 is still greater. (See Ansell's Statistics of Families, and Hendrik's Vital Statis- 

 tics of Sweden.) On the other hand, the Florentine bean register, which I have 

 before mentioned, gave in 1835, shortly before its abolition, a proportion of one 

 hundred and thirteen females to one hundred males. This must however I 

 think have been attributable to some special local circumstances interfering with 

 the registration of the male children. 



