Talk:Mary Madeline

Former Dab

   I began the accompanying page as a Dab, bcz i was unaware that the various versions of the given name "Madeline" ultimately stem (apparently via the French "Madeleine") from Magdalene (given name).
--Jerzy•t 05:37, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Why "Mary Magdalene" is the primary topic

   My attention was drawn to the title Mary Madeline by Mary Matalin, but various annoyances prompted research that eventually led me to the conclusion that those two words are primarily combined in evocation of Mary Magdalene, rather than from, perhaps equally,

1. mishearing or misremembering "Mary Magdalene"
2. mishearing as a (voiced) D the (unvoiced) T in the correct spelling of the (formerly) obscure surname "Matalin" (which is rarer than all the 90,000 or so most common American surnames that cover about 90% of the population).
   

   I found that "Mary" is the most common American female given name (2.6%), followed by "Patricia" at 2nd (1.1%). Google searches show "About 93,400 results" for

"mary madeline" OR "mary madeleine" OR "mary madelin" OR "mary madelyn"

and "About 6,250 results" for

"PATRICIA madeline" OR "PATRICIA madeleine" OR "PATRICIA madelin" OR "PATRICIA madelyn"

That is, "Patricia" alone is 40% as popular as "Mary", but adding a form of "Madeline" "hurts" "Patricia" by a factor of 15 instead of "Mary"'s 2.5. It occurred to me (and probably to Billy Bob, with his stereotypical Southern name) that alliteration is popular, so i also found MARGARET at tenth place (with 0.8%) and found "About 10,500 results" for

"MARGARET madeline" OR "MARGARET madeleine" OR "MARGARET madelin" OR "MARGARET madelyn"

So "Margaret" is about 80% as frequent as "Patricia", and shrugs off the "burden" of "Madeline" about 30% better. That supports my Billy-Bob hypothesis, but still suggests that "Madeline" and its cousins are 6 times as popular after "Mary" as after "Margaret", even tho overall "Mary" is only 3.25 times as popular as "Margaret".
   That's not scientific proof, but i think it's good reason to think that most Mary Madelines' names reflect either a nod directly to "Mary Magdalen", or a nod to ancestors who intended such a nod. I think it justifies the redirect to Mary Magdalen pending better evidence to the contrary.
--Jerzy•t 05:37, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

   A further test of the above hypothesis would be determining the relative frequencies of "Mary Madeline" hits and "Madeline Mary" hits; someone with more formal statistical training than i will probably want to rule out artefacts from what i assume is likely, namely that the distribution of first names slopes more rapidly than that of middle names, because having a popular first name is more valuable than having a popular middle name. (Parents who want to honor Uncle Xenus will more often do so via "Jonathon Xenus Smith" than by "Xenus Jonathon Smith".)
--Jerzy•t 09:35, 29 May 2013 (UTC)