Stockwell War Memorial: First names

The Stockwell War Memorial is, amongst many other things, a snapshot of a time nearly 100 years ago. In this, the first of my sporadic commentaries on aspects of the information I have dug up concerning the names on the memorial, I have looked at the most basic data on the men - their first names.

I noticed three things.

First, a few names were overwhelmingly popular (9% of the 396 men I found first names for, were called William, for instance). Some of these 'old-fashioned' names are enjoying a bit of a comeback - I know of a couple of very young Stanleys, for instance, and several Alfreds/Freds/Alfies.

Second, there were some unusual names in the mix: Jarlath occurred once (it's an Irish name), Everard, Osmond.

Third, some names that are common now were not apparently so in this period: for instance, there is only one Christopher, one Richard, one Andrew and one Stephen.

William occurred 35 times
Frederick 31
George 28
Henry 22
Albert 18
Charles 16
John 14
Alfred 13
Ernest 13
James 13
Thomas 13
Frank 11
Sidney/Sydney 8
Harry, Walter 7
Herbert, Joseph 6
Harold, Leonard, Percy 5
Claude, Edward 4
Cecil, Horace, Reginald, Stanley 3
Bernard, Edwin, Francis, Norman, Robert, Samuel, Victor 2

These names occurred once only
Abraham, Andrew, Auguste, Benjamin, Bertie, Brian, Christopher, Clarence, Conrad, David, Douglas, Edgar, Emmanuel, Everard, Fred, Giles, Harvey, Hugh, Hyman, Isaac, Jarlath, Jeffrey, Jules, Leslie, Louis, Oscar, Osmond, Philip, Reuben, Richard, Roderick, Stephen