Trends in Naming Men and Women of Four Generations in Iran: A Sociolinguistic Study

In this article, the evolution of naming in four generations in one of the governmental organizations in Tehran has been studied and analyzed. Accordingly, 3108 names of those born in the 1300s were collected through the kinship tree. These names were collected in three groups of identities, including religious, national and transnational identities. In addition, since some of the names could not be classified in any of the mentioned groups, the fourth group considered neutral to classify these people. The data obtained in each identity group were analyzed in general and examined based on the gender of individuals using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The results show that the names that derived from religious identity have the highest frequency and then come the national, neutral, and transnational names, respectively. The analysis of the evolution of names shows that in the fourth generation, national names were growing, but religious names were declining, and the tendency to use transnational names, which was very negligible in the first generations, increased in later generations. On the other hand, there are names with national and neutral identities that have subcategories of ancient names, celebrities, nature, and concepts, and the results show that old letters have increased in both men and women. However, the conceptual category has a downward trend in men but a growing trend in women.