Greek Mythology Names Over Time

This study is conducted to look at the themes of Greek mythology names and their popularity over time. This data was used from Kaggle

library(babynames)
library(tidyverse)
greek_gods <- read_csv("~/Desktop/greek_gods.csv")
babynames

## # A tibble: 1,924,665 × 5
##     year sex   name          n   prop
##    <dbl> <chr> <chr>     <int>  <dbl>
##  1  1880 F     Mary       7065 0.0724
##  2  1880 F     Anna       2604 0.0267
##  3  1880 F     Emma       2003 0.0205
##  4  1880 F     Elizabeth  1939 0.0199
##  5  1880 F     Minnie     1746 0.0179
##  6  1880 F     Margaret   1578 0.0162
##  7  1880 F     Ida        1472 0.0151
##  8  1880 F     Alice      1414 0.0145
##  9  1880 F     Bertha     1320 0.0135
## 10  1880 F     Sarah      1288 0.0132
## # … with 1,924,655 more rows

colnames(greek_gods)[1] <- "name"

greek_gods %>% 
  left_join(babynames, by="name") -> greek_god_names

This set of code was put together to show which Greek mythology names were most popular over time.

greek_god_names %>% 
  arrange(desc(prop)) %>% 
  head(10)

## # A tibble: 10 × 9
##    name   `name-greek` `main-type` `sub-type` descri…¹  year sex       n    prop
##    <chr>  <chr>        <chr>       <chr>      <chr>    <dbl> <chr> <int>   <dbl>
##  1 Damon  Δαμων        god         sea        sea spi…  1976 M      2455 0.00150
##  2 Damon  Δαμων        god         sea        sea spi…  1974 M      2360 0.00145
##  3 Damon  Δαμων        god         sea        sea spi…  1975 M      2281 0.00141
##  4 Damon  Δαμων        god         sea        sea spi…  1977 M      2356 0.00138
##  5 Damon  Δαμων        god         sea        sea spi…  1973 M      2048 0.00127
##  6 Athena Ἀθηνᾶ        god         olympian   goddess…  2017 F      2365 0.00126
##  7 Damon  Δαμων        god         sea        sea spi…  1978 M      1986 0.00116
##  8 Damon  Δαμων        god         sea        sea spi…  1972 M      1926 0.00115
##  9 Athena Ἀθηνᾶ        god         olympian   goddess…  2016 F      2171 0.00113
## 10 Athena Ἀθηνᾶ        god         olympian   goddess…  2015 F      2048 0.00105
## # … with abbreviated variable name ¹description

greek_god_names %>% 
  group_by(name, year) %>% 
  summarize(total = sum(n)) %>% 
  arrange(desc(total)) -> god_summary

god_summary %>% 
  arrange(desc(total)) %>% 
  head(100) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(year, total, color = name)) + geom_line()

This next chart is to split up the previous data into Male and Female data.

babynames %>% 
  filter(name %in% c("Athena", "Damon", "Iris", "Angelia", "Atlas", "Daphne", "Phoebe", "Simon")) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(year, prop, color = name)) + ggtitle("Greek Mythology Names Over Time") + geom_line() + facet_wrap(~sex)

The graph shows that although Iris was the most popular name in the 1930s, it has been replaced by a significantly larger number of Athenas and Damons in more recent history.

babynames %>% 
  filter(name %in% c("Athena", "Damon", "Iris", "Angelia", "Atlas", "Daphne", "Phoebe", "Simon")) %>% 
  group_by(year, sex) %>% 
  summarise(prop = mean(prop)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(year, prop, color = sex)) + geom_line()

This plot shows the percent of the entire population with any Greek mythology names over time.

Looking at the trends after pop-culture moments around Greek Mythology, the next chart will plot the names of the Greek Gods featured in the popular Percy Jackson book series of the early 2000s.

babynames %>% 
  filter(name %in% c("Zeus", "Hera", "Poseidon", "Demeter", "Ares", "Athena", "Apollo", "Artemis", "Hephaestus", "Aphrodite", "Hermes", "Dionysus")) %>% 
  filter(year > 1994) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(year, prop, color = name)) + ggtitle("Greek Mythology Names Following the Percy Jackson Series") + geom_line() + facet_wrap(~sex)

This chart has shown that there was a noticeable rise in popularity of the names mentioned in the Percy Jackson novels during the release of the books and accompanying movies.

This data has shown that the most popular names with Greek Mythology origin are Angelia, Athena, Atlas, Damon, Daphne, Iris, Phoebe, and Simon. Female Greek Mythology names have grown in popularity significantly during the 1930s and the 2000s. Male Greek Mythology names peaked near 1980 with the name Damon. The data also showed the trend of an overall increase in popularity for all the names mentioned in the Percy Jackson series. The sharp increase in 2000s females named Athena directly reflects the peak of the series. All other names also saw noticeable trend increases for the 2000s.

Greek Mythology Names Over Time

Jack Rardon

2022-09-26

Greek Mythology Names Over Time