Revista de Historia Interdisciplinaria, XLVI:2 (Otoño, 2015), 225–244.
Robert Urbatsch
The American Public’s Attention to Politics in
Conf lict and Crisis, 1880–1963 Questions about when the
public held what attitudes can be surprisingly difficult to answer. Sur-
veys and polls are quintessentially obtrusive measures. They prompt
people to think about issues in a way that is unlikely to occur in, o
reflect, typical experience. Even if we accept the potential pitfalls to
external validity, polls have not always been available—certainly not
in war zones and, in any case, not until the 1930s, from which time
the first systematic studies of public opinion are usually dated. Ellos
also tend to be retrospective; pollsters’ questions are limited to what
they thought relevant before going out into the field. Yet public
opinión, being central to many social and political processes, is im-
portant for understanding historical outcomes. It is also central for
analyses seeking to examine the lived experience and worldview
of those beyond the elite classes of society. It is therefore useful to
have other measures of mass attitudes, besides polls, to extend and
confirm traditional survey results.1
One such alternative gauge of public feeling is the incidence
of baby names. Although this measure has its own drawbacks, es
available in a variety of places and times. Además, naming in-
volves real-life stakes and consequences that do not attend survey
respuestas: Even though an unfortunate name could impose life-
long costs on a child, personal feelings exert an undeniable influ-
ence on baby-name choices. Names are thus a promising place to
explore questions about what people consciously or unconsciously
think in their daily lives. They can provide insight into how long
news events command the public’s attention—the extent to which
Robert Urbatsch is Associate Professor of Political Science, Iowa State University. He is the
author of Families’ Values: How Parents, Siblings, and Children Affect Political Attitudes (Nuevo
york, 2014); “Nominal Partisanship: Names as Political Identity Signals,” PS: Political Science
& Política, XLVII (2014), 463–467.
© 2015 por el Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts y The Journal of Interdisciplinary
Historia, Cª, doi:10.1162/JINH_a_00832
For unobtrusive measures, see Eugene J. Webb, Donald T.. Campbell, Richard D.
1
Schwartz, and Lee Sechrest, Unobtrusive Measures (Thousand Oaks, 1999); for the historical
development of polling, Roberto M.. Groves, “Three Eras of Survey Research,” Public Opinion
Quarterly, LXXV (2011), 861–871; D. Sunshine Hillygus, “The Evolution of Election Polling
in the United States,” ibid., 962–981.
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226
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
historically important events and circumstances insinuate them-
selves into contemporaneous, everyday life.2
The empirical analysis in this article focuses on the United
States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
specifically on the naming of babies for presidential figures (incluir-
En g, at times, presidential candidates). It first shows that names can
serve as a useful historical indicator, reliably reflecting major polit-
ical events. Por ejemplo, matters relating to the presidency have
measurably affected the names chosen for children under many
circumstances, such as elections and crises involving conflict and
guerra. These choices help to illuminate how people in the past re-
acted to events, as well as how general political sentiment related
to attitudes regarding the head of state. They also demonstrate
some of the possible uses of naming practices, as often explored
in anthropological and sociological settings, for addressing histor-
ical questions throughout the social sciences.3
NAMES AS MARKERS OF CULTURAL SALIENCE Personal names have
historically derived from many sources, from cultural trends to
deep matters of parental identity. Names therefore preserve for
posterity what might otherwise be relatively fleeting social con-
cerns. Consider Figure 1, which presents data from the 1920 A NOSOTROS.
census about the years of birth (inferred from reported ages) of peo-
ple whose first name is “Maine.” This unusual name briefly surged
just as a slogan urging people to remember an exploded ship of that
name emerged in the press. Some commentators doubt that
foreign-policy crises can inflame public opinion to any calculable
extent, but at least a few people were sufficiently moved to com-
memorate the sinking of the Maine in a lasting way. Even though
por 1920, succeeding events—not the least of which was World
War I—had supplanted the tragic deaths of hundreds of sailors
in Cuba, those named “Maine” born in 1898 still manifested
2 Alexandre Pascual et al., “First Name Popularity as Predictor of Employability,” Names,
LXIII (2015), 30–36; Cynthia Whissell, “Geographical and Political Predictors of Emotion in
the Sounds of Favorite Baby Names,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, CII (2006), 105–108.
For other political influences on names, ver J. Eric Oliver, Thomas Wood, and Alexandra
3
Bass, “Liberellas Versus Konservatives: Social Status, Ideology, and Birth Names in the United
Estados,” Political Behavior (Marzo 2015); Ben Blatt, “Meet Rutherford: The Surprisingly Du-
rable American Habit of Naming Kids after Sitting Presidents,” Slate, 17 Julio 2014.
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PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
Fig.1 Number of People Named “Maine” in the 1920 A NOSOTROS. Census,
| 227
by Year of Birth
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NOTE This figure also includes those reporting only a first initial with “Maine” as the middle
name.
the earlier flicker of public concern. The relationship between po-
litical events and choice of name is not always so direct and literal,
but names can reveal what is on the mind of at least some of the
public at a given time and place.4
Name givers are, clearly, not a random sample of the general
población. The ill, the unmarried, and the elderly are all less likely
for various reasons to have, and thus to name, niños, a pesar de
they may indirectly influence the people who are selecting child
names. Además, because naming is often perceived to be a
weighty, abiding act, especially in the small families of recent de-
cades, it can evade the vicissitudes of daily events to reflect deeper
For the Maine incident, see Louis A. Pérez, Jr., “The Meaning of the Maine: Causation
4
and the Historiography of the Spanish-American War,” Pacific Historical Review, LVIII (1989),
293–322; for the cultural implications of names, Jonah Berger, Eric T. Bradlow, Alex Braunstein,
and Yao Zhang, “From Karen to Katie: Using Baby Names to Understand Cultural Evolution,"
ciencia psicológica, XXIII (2012), 1067–1073; Gabriele vom Bruck and Barbara Bodenhorn
(editores.), Anthropology of Names and Naming (Nueva York, 2006); for specific historical applications,
Por ejemplo, David Garrioch, “Suzanne, David, Judith, Isaac . . . : Given Names and Protestant
Religious Identity in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” French Historical Studies, XXXII (2012), 33–67;
Anja Bruhn, Denis Huschka, and Gert G. Wagner, “Naming and War in Modern Germany,"
Names, LX (2012), 74–89; Idowu Odebode, “Naming Systems during Yoruba Wars: A Socio-
linguistic Study,” ibid., LVIII (2010), 209–218.
228
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
dimensions of identity. As the “Maine” example shows, sin embargo,
even transient episodes can hold deep meaning for a while, y
many people seem willing to name children after situations that
were obscure to them just a few weeks previously. Desde el
names of prominent people and events tend to remain well known
in the future, names based on the news of the day do not neces-
sarily fade into obscurity.5
Time-sensitive factors are not the only, or even the primary,
influence on names. Name choices also derive from parental ide-
ology, ethnic background, and socioeconomic status. As a case in
punto, one strand of French studies explores which parents were
likely to give their children “revolutionary” rather than traditional
names during the late eighteenth century. Además, algunos de
the deeper and demographic differences in naming practices may
reflect varying sensitivity to recent events. People with a more tra-
ditional orientation are less apt to adopt fashionable, event-sensitive
names than are those who are less conservative. These predictable
patterns suggest that unusual choices of name reflect conscious
pensamiento, despite their emotional component. Even short-term re-
sponses inform an understanding of the psychology and sociology
of public attitudes.6
For the identity-based roots of name choices, see Celia Emmelhainz, “Naming a New
5
Self: Identity Elasticity and Self-Definition in Voluntary Name Changes,” Names, LX
(2012), 156–165. Arnout van de Rijt, Eran Shor, Charles Ward, and Steven Skiena, “Only
15 Minutes? The Social Stratification of Fame in Printed Media,” American Sociological Review,
LXXVIII (2013), 266–289, discuss the persistence of cultural phenomena, such as names. Para
names marking and shaping cultural alignments, see Israel Waismel-Manor and Natalie Jomini
stroud, “The Influence of President Obama’s Middle Name on Middle Eastern and US Per-
ceptions,” Political Behavior, XXXVI (2013), 621–641.
For the various factors that influence naming choices, see David R. Johnson and Laurie K.
6
Scheuble, “What Should We Call Our Kids? Choosing Children’s Surnames When Parents’
Last Names Differ,” Social Science Journal, XXXIX (2002), 419–429; Rosalind Edwards and
Chamion Caballero, “What’s in a Name? An Exploration of the Significance of Personal
Naming of ‘Mixed’ Children for Parents from Different Racial, Ethnic and Faith Back-
grounds,” Sociological Review, LVI (2008), 39–60; Gerrit Bloothooft and David Onland, “So-
cioeconomic Determinants of First Names,” Names, LIX (2011), 25–41; Mark Elchardus and
Jessy Siongers, “First Names as Collective Identifiers: An Empirical Analysis of the Social
Meanings of First Names,” Cultural Sociology, V (2011), 403–422; for a review of the literature
about revolutionary French names, Serge Bianchi, “Les ‘Prénoms Révolutionnaires’ dans la
Révolution Française: Un Chantier en Devenir,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française,
CCCXXII (2000), 17–38; for the resistance of names to nonsubstantive influences, Wayne E.
Thogmartin, “The QWERTY Effect Does Not Extend to Birth Names,” Names, LXI (2013),
47–52.
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PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
| 229
SHORT-TERM NAMING SHIFTS The sometimes-ephemeral nature of
names implies that annual data like that used in Figure 1 may be
too blunt a tool for capturing public responses. Since public atten-
tion is likely to shift on scales much shorter than a year, data with a
finer temporal grain can better pinpoint how the public reacted to
news events. The case of people in the United States choosing to
name their children after presidents is compelling evidence of baby
names as indicators of day-to-day public sentiment. Aunque el
person of the president may affect people’s lives less directly than
do such policy outcomes as economic conditions or wars, el presidente-
ident is the standard bearer for personalized politics. A president’s
ability to shift public opinion suggests an intimate connection with
people’s thoughts. The question is when are presidents most on
the minds of their people, in times of relative quiet or in times
of crisis? Previous literature suggests several contexts that are likely
to increase public attention to the president.7
One important factor is media attention. Presidential activities
are widely covered, but those that attract the most reporting have
the greatest import. The American media tends to favor political
competitions with distinct winners and losers. The focus on pres-
idential candidates, especially as an election approaches, is particu-
larly intense. From the perspective of the press, campaign events
have the additional advantage of set dates, allowing reporters to
be dispatched in advance. But spontaneous events can also draw
public attention to a president, especially during crises; threats to
the nation tend to rally public support for the country and, by ex-
tension, its political leadership. Besides bringing people together
behind national symbols, crises also demand immediate reaction,
which plays to the executive’s strength, in contrast to the inher-
ently more deliberative, and hence slower, legislature. The expan-
sion of the presidential role is especially large if the crisis is military
and the commander-in-chief function comes to the foreground.8
7 Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (editores.), The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative
Study of Modern Democracies (Nueva York, 2005); Kenneth E. Morris and Barry Schwartz, “Why
They Liked Ike: Tradition, Crisis, and Heroic Leadership,” Sociological Quarterly, XXXIV
(1993), 133–151. For media shaping of presidential power, see Amber E. Boydstun, rebeca
A. Glazier, and Claire Phillips, “Agenda Control in the 2008 Presidential Debates,” American
Politics Research, XLI (2013), 863–899; Matthew R. Miles, “The Bully Pulpit and Media Cov-
erage: Power without Persuasion,” International Journal of Press-Politics, XIX (2014), 66–84.
For explorations of the media’s coverage of politics and the presidency, see Andrew W.
8
Barrett, “Press Coverage of Legislative Appeals by the President,” Political Research Quarterly,
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230
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
Knowing that some events are likely to bring (positivo) público
attention to the president, sin embargo, leaves several questions unan-
swered. How long do these sorts of events dominate public concern
or linger in the memory? Are people more apt to personalize the
presidency in crises, or is mere domination of media coverage more
important? Baby names can help to provide insight into the answers.9
The Master Death File The source for the names used in this
article is a 2011 version of the Master Death File, a central database
intended to allow screening for fraud, which contains the United
States Social Security Administration’s compilation of deceased
holders of social-security numbers. The overwhelming majority
of Americans have had these codes since the 1930s; members of
a few exempt religious groups and those who died as children be-
fore the mid-1980s are the primary exceptions. Since the data in-
clude nearly all of the Americans who have been alive since World
War II but died before 2011, they cover predominantly those res-
idents of the United States born in the decades around the 1910s.
The coverage is progressively less extensive for those born earlier
(who often died before implementation of the Social Security Act)
and those born later (who were more likely to be alive in 2011).
Each year, de 1876 a 1965, al menos 100,000 people in the file
were born, providing a large enough sample to observe even un-
common names and maintain a roughly constant number of total
childbirths per day within any given year.10
LX (2014), 655–668; Jesper Strömbäck and Daniela V. Dimitrova, “Political and Media Sys-
tems Matter: A Comparison of Election News Coverage in Sweden and the United States,"
Harvard International Journal of Press-Politics, XI (2006), 131–147; for the tendency to support the
government during crises, William D. Baker and John R. Oneal, “Patriotism or Opinion
Leadership? The Nature and Origins of the ‘Rally ’Round the Flag’ Effect,” Journal of Conflict
Resolution, VL (2001), 661–687; Alan J. Lambert, j. PAG. Schott, and Laura Scherer, “Threat,
Política, and Attitudes: Toward a Greater Understanding of Rally-’Round-the-Flag Effects,"
Current Directions in Psychological Science, XX (2011), 343–348.
9 W.. Russell Neuman, “The Threshold of Public Attention,” Public Opinion Quarterly, LIV
(1990), 159–176.
10 The Social Security Master Death File, available at www.ssdmf.info (accessed May 14,
2014). The file includes native-born Americans as well as immigrants whose parents were
likely unexposed to American news. The name-based measure thus may understate propor-
tional increases in name use among the actual American population. Note that although Social
Security fails to include railroad employees, who have a separate pension system, affiliates of
the Railroad Retirement Board are included in the Master Death File. During the New Deal,
railroad employees acquired a parallel pension fund that is similar to, and closely coordinated
con, Social Security. En efecto, the identification numbers of the two systems do not overlap.
Social Security numbers beginning with the prefixes 700 a 728 belong to railroad employees.
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PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
| 231
From these data, the dependent variable is the number of people
born on a day whose given name matched that of a president (o
related person of interest). Determining matches requires some
judgment calls. The analysis treats middle names as first names when
they are the more commonly in use; por ejemplo, (tomás)
Woodrow Wilson is “Woodrow” and ( John) Calvin Coolidge is
“Calvin.” Likewise, for better comparability of presidents, solo
official names, rather than such nicknames as “Cal” or “Ike,” apply.
Además, only perfect matches in spelling count: “McKinley”
matches the president’s name, but “McKinlay” does not.
Many people share the name of a president at the time of their
birth by mere coincidence. Presidential names are often common;
duplications could derive from any number of alternative sources.
The interest comes via systematic fluctuations from the back-
ground noise of those other naming sources, which are unlikely
to correlate with salient, presidential moments. De este modo, como en la figura 1,
the key point is whether the choice of a name within the population
diverged from its average baseline. To make this determination, el
models below employ the methodology of the event study—a com-
mon design from economic and financial analyses. The independent
variable is the number of days after a key event when an observation
ocurre. Por ejemplo, the date of an election serves as day zero; el
day before it is day negative one; the day before that one is day neg-
ative two, etcétera. En cambio, the day after a death is day one; el
next day after that one is day two, etcétera, until every date in the
frame has a number. In this analysis, the frame extends from a week
before the relevant event to four weeks after it (other frames produce
results similar to those reported).11
To observe the effect of deaths over time, a dummy variable is
created for all days zero; this indicator models the average outcome
variable on the date of each event. Another dummy variable indicates
days one (eso es, the days immediate after each event); another indi-
cates days two, and so on for all of the days within the frame. Estos
are the independent variables of interest in the model. A statistically or
substantively significant effect implies that a given position in
the frame—say, two days after whatever event is under analysis—
associates with a crop of newborns with a name count diverging from
11 A. Craig MacKinlay, “Event Studies in Economics and Finance,” Journal of Economic
Literature, XXXVI (1997), 13–39.
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232
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
the average. This setup requires care in the selection of the events
that are to qualify. Models below consider three kinds of events:
Elections Elections offer a variety of motivations for parents
giving their children political names—admiration for a candidate;
partisan affiliation; or triumphalism, if the namesake candidate has
emerged as victorious. Presidential elections are particularly con-
venient events to study in the United States since they occur on
a single, well-defined day (although sometimes, as in 1876, defin-
itive results have to wait). They also bring fame to multiple people,
including losing candidates. Electoral winners and losers alike are
often prominent, becoming household names, but the distinct ad-
vantages of victory are not to be denied. Es decir, elecciones
produce not only attention to politics and to specific personalities;
they also cue parents to announce their partisan loyalties, especially
when successful, in their choice of babies’ names. The election
data herein cover the presidential elections from 1880 a 1960.
Crises National crises can have multiple effects. One tradi-
tional response to such crises is to rally around the executive as a
symbol of the nation, but crises can also imply leadership failure, o
create security or economic concerns that could distract attention
from the president. The analyses in this study look at two classes of
crisis—foreign policy, which is generally associated more with the
president as a national symbol than domestic policy, and presiden-
tial assassinations (or attempts at them), which are the ne plus ultra
of personal politics, garnering overwhelming support for a (re-
cently shot and possibly deceased) president.
Crises present greater challenges of definition than do elections.
It is not always easy to determine exactly when crises occur. Is the
critical moment in an assassination the shooting or the death? Cuando
does an encroaching belligerent situation rise to the level of a crisis?
This analysis denotes an assassination as the day of a shooting, even if
the president died later, and a foreign-policy crisis as a formal decla-
ration of war, plus United Nations Security Council Resolution 82,
which initiated America’s involvement in the Korean War.12
“Declarations of war” in this article include only the United States’ first entry into a
12
conflict—that against Germany in World War I and Japan in World War II. Excluding the
Korean War does not change the gist of reported results; nor does using other lists of foreign-
policy crises, such as the sinking of the Lusitania and of the Maine or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Para
discussions of foreign-policy crises and their effects on the public, see Cindy D. Kam and Jennifer
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PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
| 233
Since analysts usually consider graphs better than tables at
conveying quantitative information, the results of this study are
in graphic form, showing averages and 95 percent confidence
intervals. Cifra 2 considers the popularity of winning candidates
(left panel) and losing candidates (right panel) as demonstrated by
the naming of newborns in the days around the election. Candidates
have multiple names—given names and family names and, in some
casos, middle names. Respectivamente, the figure provides separate anal-
yses for each of these three types of name. Because these different
types are of widely varying frequency (presidential first names are, como
standard given names, much more common), each class is normal-
ized for ease of comparability; the average prevalence of a name in
the two weeks before an election has a value of 100. Por eso, un
estimated value of 200 indicates that a name has become twice as
common as at the pre-election baseline (which may include some
pre-election naming of babies after the candidates).13
el primero, middle, and family names associated with winning
candidates see a surge around their election. En efecto, this boost is
statistically distinguishable from the baseline level—as well as from
losing candidates’ names—several days before the election, either
because parents assigned names a few days after birth or because
they had confidence in their candidates’ prospects. The effect is,
sin embargo, strongest on Election Day itself, when victors’ surnames
rocket to five times their usual frequency. Because surnames tend
to be relatively uncommon as given names, estimates about sur-
names as given names have relatively wide confidence intervals.
Yet the incidence of winners’ first names also increases dramati-
cally on Election Day, estimated, on average, to be three times
the baseline figure. Even electees’ middle names, typically only a
METRO. Ramos, “Joining and Leaving the Rally,” Public Opinion Quarterly, LXX (2008), 619–650;
Brian Newman and Andrew Forcehimes, “‘Rally Round the Flag’ Events for Presidential Ap-
proval Research,” Electoral Studies, XXIX (2010), 144–154; for reactions to presidential shootings,
Paul B. Sheatsley and Jacob J. Feldman, “The Assassination of Kennedy: A Preliminary Report
on Public Reactions and Behavior,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVIII (1964), 189–215.
13
For the superiority of graphical presentations, see Andrew Gelman, Cristian Pasarica, y
Rahul Dodhia, “Let’s Practice What We Preach: Turning Tables into Graphs,” American Stat-
istician, LVI (2002), 121–130. Graphical analysis produces results similar to a more formal
event-study methodology using negative-binomial regressions to model the count of new-
borns with presidentially related names. It includes regressions with name or year-fixed effects
to account for the varying popularity of names themselves (“Grover” has always been rarer
than “William”) and the changing population size during the period under consideration.
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234
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
Fig.2 Newborns Receiving Presidential Candidate Names around
Elections, 1880–1960
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NOTE Points show observed values; line shows smoothed mean (with shaded area indicating
95% intervalo de confianza).
weak association with presidents, are statistically more common on
the day of the election than they were previously.14
Every elected president’s surname except “Eisenhower” occurs once in the data set.
14
Eisenhower’s absence is due, at least in part, to the fact that most people born in Eisenhower’s
PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
| 235
Por el contrario, losing candidates’ names show far less movement.
The slight upticks from the baseline that they show on Election
Day are not large enough to achieve statistical significance in a tra-
ditional event-study setup. Además, these effects, such as they
son, vanish quickly after elections. Despite their extreme familiar-
idad, especially in the news around elections, the names of losing
candidates receive relatively little recognition from name-givers.
Evidently, the use of political names is not simply a by-product
of familiarity; it reflects partisan triumphalism or, tal vez, a band-
wagon effect.15
Cifra 3 displays the reactions to crises; shootings are on the
left and foreign-policy issues on the right. Because such events do
not happen very often, they do not produce meaningful results for
presidential surnames, which are sparse in the data, anyway (esti-
mates have very wide confidence intervals). Por eso, the figures
present aggregate results for every class of name.
The shooting of incumbent presidents does not produce a
spike in naming close to that seen at elections. The estimated in-
crease in name usage never exceeds 50 por ciento (pendiente, en parte, to the
relevant presidents having the common names of James, William,
y juan, which leave little room to expand). Sin embargo, el en-
crease lasts much longer. Rather than dissipating in a matter of
días, the names of presidents who were victims of shootings are
still appreciably above the baseline for several weeks. This timeline
in part reflects the contingency that two of the three presidents
lingered for some days after their shooting; the highest peak came
in the aftermath of President McKinley’s death, just over a week
after he was wounded. Sin embargo, it implies that popular atten-
tion to the president, and to political news, can endure for weeks.
tenure are still alive and therefore not in the sample. Aggregated Social Security Administra-
tion data, sin embargo, show babies named Eisenhower in 1952.
Inaugurations, and even some major presidential speeches, show results similar to those
involving elections—a short-lived but sharp and statistically significant spike in presidential
namesakes. Smoothed means throughout are both forward- and backward-looking, incorpo-
rating data from both the recent past and the near future. This approach generally comports
with the idea that the events under consideration are either predictable (such as elections) o
offer advance warning (the rising tensions before a declaration of war, even those preceding
the attack on Pearl Harbor). For such events as an assassination attempt or the massacre at
Wounded Knee (see below), it may be less plausible. In both cases, a trailing mean, looking
only at the past few days, shows a much more abrupt effect at the time of the crisis.
15
since he outpolled a major-party candidate. Excluding Roosevelt produces similar results.
“Losing candidates” include only major-party nominees and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912,
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236
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
Fig.3 Newborns Receiving Presidential First Names around Political
Crises, 1881–1963
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NOTE Points show observed values; line shows smoothed mean (with shaded area indicating
95% intervalo de confianza).
Foreign-policy crises also cause a noticeable increase in the
use of a president’s name—not, sin embargo, at the moment when
war was declared but a few days later. Rallying around the president
does not necessarily occur at the same time as a formal declaration of
| 237
PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
guerra, even though the sudden attack that launched America’s in-
volvement in World War II (one of the four wars in the period)
produced immediate support for the nation’s leader. Also notable
is that the declarations of war, like the shootings, produce an in-
crease in iterations of the president’s name that are, though statisti-
cally significant, much smaller than that associated with elections or
inaugurations. Assassinations and wars may not always spur positive
emotions and good will toward a president, and the preoccupations
of new parents might not always permit a full awareness of a sudden
outbreak of war or an assassination.
INTERPRETING NEWS-LINKED BABY NAMES Baby names thus provide
a measure of the public’s reaction to political events. More ambig-
uous is whether they indicate conscious approval of a chosen name-
beneficio; después de todo, people may not realize why a name sounds familiar or
appealing when they settle on it. As noted above, the differential
election effects for winning and losing candidates suggest that more
than exposure is at play. Candidates may win office simply because
they are more famous. Directly testing whether naming equates
with public approval requires comparison with a data set containing
information that clearly measures presidential approval.
Survey data can be helpful in that regard. Owing to the relatively
late origins of modern polling methods, such data emerged only after
the period for which the Master Death File has its fullest coverage.
Considerar, sin embargo, the sixty-five Gallup polls of presidential approv-
al that the Roper Center reported for the Truman presidency. During
the course of any individual poll in this set, which lasted several days,
al menos 4,000 children were born, of whom a certain proportion were
named “Harry” or “Truman.” For example, during the first survey,
from June 1 a junio 5, 1945, 5,351 people in the Social Security
Master Data File were born, fifteen of whom received one of the
presidential names. Across the polls, the correlation between presi-
dential approval and the share of babies receiving presidential names
es 0.43, with the p statistic (on the null hypothesis that the correlation
is zero) being less than 0.01. Similarmente, in regressions predicting the
share of babies named “Harry” or “Truman” during each poll’s du-
ration, the favorability rating takes a positive and statistically signifi-
cant coefficient (with or without year-fixed effects in the model).
The implied effect is that a standard-deviation increase in presidential
approval produces an approximately half-standard-deviation increase
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238
Fig.4
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
Polling and Newborns Receiving Presidential Names during
the Truman Administration
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NOTE Points show observed values; line shows regression estimate (with shaded area indicat-
En g 95% intervalo de confianza).
in names related to the president. Cifra 4 is a graphic representation
of this relationship.
Although this correlation is only moderate, it strongly sug-
gests that the two measures capture some of the same underlying
sentiment. President Truman represents a useful case because of
the frequent polls during his tenure, but the Truman adminis-
tration may overstate the noisiness of the birth-name measure.
Because most people born during the Truman administration were
still alive in 2011, hence excluded from the data herein, the num-
ber of daily observations is lower than it might be, producing a less
precise measure. These excluded people, furthermore, are not a
PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
| 239
random selection; they are the segment of the population who had
not lived long yet. They might have had socioeconomic or demo-
graphic characteristics that differed from those of the general popu-
lación. De este modo, they might have reduced the correlation between the
two measures of attitudes toward the president, especially because
names also show distinct linkages to parental race and education.
Sin embargo, presidential names, though not a perfect analog to poll
resultados, appear to provide a window into public sentiment.16
The primary value of having an alternative measure of public
sentiment lies not in eras and contexts that had more precise, Entre-
ditional measures of public opinion but in those that did not have
a ellos. For those periods, baby names provide one instrument for
examining how people felt and reacted to ongoing events. Ellos
therefore deserve consideration as systematic evidence for popular
reactions to otherwise unclear events.
PRESIDENTIAL NAMES IN THE WAKE OF WOUNDED KNEE The massa-
cre of hundreds of Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota,
on December 29, 1890, was a tragic exclamation point in the al-
ready grim nineteenth-century relationship between the United
States government and its indigenous people. Occurring long after
the end of widespread fighting in the Sioux Wars, that bloodshed
seems in retrospect particularly grotesque and gratuitous. Its costs
were not merely the Native Americans and federal soldiers who
were killed or wounded but also an enduring legacy of trauma
and distrust. Accounts of public reaction at the time varied. El
contemporary media generally framed the incident as a noble tri-
umph for the soldiers. The headline in the next day’s New York
Times—“A Fight with the Hostiles”—typified both the tone of
the press and the initial perception of the incident as an encounter
with armed foes—the sort of situation likely to produce a rally of
patriotic support for the political leadership. The racial animus
and suspicion toward the victims continued for some time. Cómo-
alguna vez, a simultaneous countercurrent of disquiet and outrage was
evident. Within days of the bloodbath, rumors reached Washington
that Wounded Knee was less a pitched battle than the slaughter of
16 The importance of leaders’ popularity is not unique to the United States. See Seonghui
Sotavento, “Party Responsiveness to the Collective Judgment of the Electorate: The Case of Pres-
idential Popularity in Latin America,” Comparative Political Studies, XLVII (2014), 1973–1999.
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240
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
largely unarmed women and children. By the early 1890s, after a
string of similar massacres, public opinion “no longer automatically
took the white man’s side.”17
These accounts imply divergent attitudes among the late
nineteenth-century American public, with different implications
for their understanding of the policy and pressure that the govern-
ment faced. These differing stories also complicate the literature
about how conflicts and military atrocities affect public attitudes.
Resolving whether Wounded Knee produced more approbation
than revulsion, y viceversa, is thus of considerable value. Desde
the time of the event antedates scientific polling methods by de-
cades, standard modern survey methodologies are not available or
applicable.
The evidence presented in previous sections shows that crisis
and conflict usually creates moderately enhanced presidential sup-
puerto; the president becomes the personification of military action.
Sin embargo, attitudes toward an issue or event such as Wounded
Knee and the overall evaluation of a president do not necessarily
coincide. Presidential approval is a multidimensional phenomenon
influenced by everything from the economy to a vague mood sur-
rounding the country as a whole; factors completely independent
of the military efforts against the Lakota may well have informed
public opinion to one extent or another. En cambio, even if
people feel strongly about an incident, they may not connect it
directly to the president, or they may find the very idea of naming
a child after a president puzzling or unseemly. But approval is tied
to the salient issues of the time, especially those covered by the
media. The events on the Pine Ridge Reservation attracted so
much media coverage that the Harrison administration was com-
pelled to express regret about the bloodshed within a week of its
occurrence. Además, the reputation of a president can depend
largely on the effects of conflict; even the secondary consequences
17 Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, “The Return to the Sacred Path: Healing the Historical
Trauma and Historical Unresolved Grief Response among the Lakota through a Psychoeduca-
tional Group Intervention,” Smith College Studies in Social Work, LXVIII (1998), 287–305. El
contemporary reaction summarized in this paragraph comes from “A Fight with the Hostiles,"
New York Times, 30 Dec. 1890, 1; Heather Cox Richardson, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the
Road to an American Massacre (Nueva York, 2010), 11; j. Marshall Beier, “Grave Misgivings: Alle-
gory, Catharsis, Composition,” Security Dialogue, XXXVIII (2007), 251–269; Jerome A. verde,
American Carnage: Wounded Knee, 1890 (Norman, 2014), 318; Roger L. di Silvestro, In the Shadow
of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Story of the Indian Wars (Nueva York, 2011), 150.
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PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
| 241
of military campaigns tend to be important for presidential approval.
De este modo, the evaluation of President Harrison’s term in office likely
had much to do with how the populace viewed Wounded Knee.18
The names that suggest positive sentiment toward Harrison
and his administration are “Benjamin” and “Harrison.” In this pe-
riod, around six or seven newborns received those names each day
out of the approximately 2,000 daily births that eventually entered
the Social Security name list. The left panel of Figure 5 gives the
(smoothed) share of births featuring either of these names in the
weeks around the date of Wounded Knee; the massacre is marked
on the figure with a vertical dashed line (first reports of the mas-
sacre did not appear in many newspapers until the following day at
the earliest).
As the figure shows, days in late December averaged, with some
variations, alrededor 2.9 people named “Benjamin” or “Harrison” per
1,000 births. At the end of the month, exactly when word of the
Wounded Knee massacre was spreading, the proportion of these
names dropped swiftly, remaining for most of January at a level
approximately one-quarter lower than the December level. Rig-
orous hypothesis tests confirm the informal impression of the
graph. In a regression predicting the daily rate of presidential
names throughout the range shown in the figure, the predicted
rate of “Benjamin” or “Harrison” births days after the massacre
es 0.5 a 0.7 por 1,000 lower than days before—depending on
whether the specification includes a lagged dependent varia-
ble, fixed effects according to day of the week, or other control
variables (two-tailed p < 0.05). Nor is this some seasonal phenom-
enon in which, say, “Benjamin” is always less common among Jan-
uary births, because of an association with particular saints’ festivals
or name days. The right-side panel of Figure 5, which shows the
pattern of “Benjamin” or “Harrison” births for the other three years
of his term, indicates no comparable decrease in presidential names
at analogous times. Regressions using data from other years finds no
comparable drop in presidential names after December 29.19
18 Richardson, Wounded Knee, 210; Benny Geys, “Wars, Presidents, and Popularity: The
Political Cost(s) of War Re-Examined,” Public Opinion Quarterly, LXXIV (2010), 357–374.
19 Given the timing of the Wounded Knee massacre, the disproportionate number of en-
tries that report births on Christmas or New Year’s Day, perhaps because of uncertainty about
actual birthdates, adds some noise to estimates.
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242
| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
Fig.5 Newborns Receiving Presidential First Names during Benjamin
Harrison’s Presidency
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NOTE Points show observed values; line shows smoothed mean (with shaded area indicating
95% confidence interval).
Again, this finding hardly proves that the public’s general reac-
tion to Wounded Knee was negative and anti-government. Other
events might have provoked the observed pattern. Yet it points to
the value of using names to gauge the sentiments of populations
who may not have left behind diaries or had a direct voice in media
PU BL I C A T T E NT ION TO PO L I T I CS
| 243
coverage. The evidence, in this case, hints at popular views regard-
ing the nation’s conflict with indigenous groups and the use of mil-
itary force, important macrohistorical trends for which direct
evidence most often comes from newspapers that are unlikely to
represent public opinion accurately. Name-based evidence allows
a separate vantage point from which to triangulate such material.
Although names given at birth provide a helpful window into past
preoccupations and attitudes, they cannot answer every question that
social scientists can raise about public opinion because they pertain
only to a particular segment of the population, and they are likely
to respond only to the largest shocks. Nevertheless, they are a useful
complement to surveys and other traditional measures of public
opinion. Naming practices are also interesting in their own right
for what they reveal about past societies, individuals, and values.
Child-name data is available from multiple sources in modern,
bureaucratic societies. Many civic, medical, and religious institutions
keep daily records of local births that are available in archives.
National censuses may not keep daily records, but they often include
month or year of birth from which broader trends can be computed;
similar information can sometimes be gleaned from educational
institutions’ registries.
This study focuses primarily on short-term naming reactions
to a few types of event. It finds often substantial, but generally
short-lived, jumps in the use of presidential names around major
political events in the United States, be they elections or crises,
though public attention was not captivated by them or the pres-
idency for long. Further research could explore many other
elaborations of this method. It could look at monthly (or, as in
Figure 1, yearly) naming patterns for changes in public opinion
before polls were common or scientific. Because most leaders’ last
names are not common choices for first names, changes in their
occurrence, one way or another, during their namesakes’ admin-
istrations probably reflected attitudes toward an incumbent, most
likely in the face of scandal or geopolitical change. Variations in
naming practice in general can be telling. For example, in the
English-speaking world, German names—especially “Adolf ” or
“Adolph”—declined precipitously during the world wars.
This method is capable of broad application, both geograph-
ically and temporally. Many countries, not just the United States,
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| R O B E R T U R B A T S C H
have records that include birthdates as well as names that could be
helpful in comparative analyses. For instance, the already digitized
1910 Norwegian census can show how names changed in the days
surrounding Norwegian independence, thus providing a measure
of patriotism. Similarly, such data can track the influence of events
and figures outside politics: Did Jenny Lind or Florence Nightin-
gale earn commemoration for their news-making achievements
with a surge in namesakes? Celebratory names of this sort might
be geographically concentrated (around Lind’s concert tour sites
or Nightingale’s nursing school in London), leading to telltale spa-
tial patterns. Furthermore, bounces in name popularity centered
on political events might benefit from comparisons with, say, those
surrounding religious features, like saint’s days. This methodology,
like many other unconventional ones, holds promise for casting
new light on a wide variety of issues.20
Another step is to discern more about the parents who took
political inspiration for their naming practices. Although the
Master Death File does not contain the relevant data, it offers suf-
ficient clues to link most people with records that lead, directly or
indirectly, to information about families’ origins and socioeco-
nomic status. Comparing all families with a child born on Election
Day, say, and identifying the factors associated with naming chil-
dren for victors could result in deep and detailed insights about
identities and beliefs that would otherwise remain unknown.
The public opinion to which naming testifies can also serve as
a constraint on elites, guiding or channeling government policy.
As an alternative source of information about the issues that matter
in people’s daily lives—often involving people and social groups
who are absent from the historical record—personal names supple-
ment previous methodological approaches to key questions con-
cerning public opinion.21
20 Keith Head and Thierry Mayer, “Detection of Local Interactions from the Spatial Pat-
tern of Names in France,” Journal of Regional Science, XLVIII (2008), 67–95.
21
For the ways in which public opinion constrains elites and major social outcomes, see
Sophia Menache, “Isabella of France, Queen of England: A Postscript,” Belgisch Tijdschrift voor
Filologie en Geschiedenis, XC (2012), 493–512; Philip B. K. Potter, “Electoral Margins and
American Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly, LVII (2013), 505–518; Douglas L.
Kriner and Francis X. Shen, “Reassessing American Casualty Sensitivity: The Mediating
Influence of Inequality,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, LVIII (2014), 1174–1201.
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