Tomorrow the Dutch provincial elections will be held and a recent analysis ([nos.nl/l/2465934](https://nos.nl/l/2465934)) showed that ‘Jan’ is the most common first name among the candidates. A natural question is then whether this still holds per party? We therefore made a word cloud for the twenty largest parties in terms of the number of candidates and selected the ten most common first names.
Some caveats:
* The party *Forum voor Democratie* only publishes the initials of their candidates and not their first names. This unfortunately meant they had to be excluded from the analysis.
* Not all candidates had a gender published. These were imputed.
* Names were coloured according to the candidates’ gender to easily distinguish them visually. Be careful, though, not to conclude from a word cloud looking blue/pink that the majority of candidates is male/female. By selecting only the top ten most common names we are namely cutting off a potentially long tail with rare names.
* The name ‘Jan’ sometimes occurs as parts of other names such as ‘Jan Willem’ or ‘Henk Jan’. We considered these to be genuinely different names, but a more thorough analysis that shows how common it is might lump such compound names together.
* This visualisation was made for fun and word clouds were chosen to make the most common name pop out visually. The use of word clouds is discouraged in general because the human eye is fairly poor at comparing areas. For more serious purposes lollipop charts would be a better alternative.
So if you blame Jan for *anything*, you’re likely corrext!
Volt heeft een zichtbare voorkeur voor mensen waarvan de namen met een A beginnen
Maakt dit diagram ook onderscheid tussen vrouwelijke en mannelijke Annes of Henny’s? Of wordt pas achteraf het gender gegokt van een Anne of een Henny?
Waarom zitten er zoveel Arie’s bij de SGP? dat viel me zelf ook al op
Wist niet dat dat zo’n populaire naam was bij gristenen
Did you get all data correctly? For Volt I recognize mostly the candidates from Utrecht, but they’re participating in 8 provinces, and it appears like you’re missing some names. Can’t really comment on the other parties, but you might have to check them as well…
Edit: oh i get it. I guess you take the 10 most appearing names, but after Bart and Julia, every name is unique so you go alphabetically down the list.
Laat goed zien hoe wij vooral worden geregeerd door mensen die de consequenties van hun acties nauwelijks gaan meemaken.
All the Hanses are likely also Johannes.
Sure, Jan
Henk is ook goed vertegenwoordigd.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! An improved version of the chart can be found here: https://imgur.com/MC0nHTg. Nuud’s question about the Arie’s among the SGP lead to finding a bug, and Borazon’s suggestion to count lijstduwers only once gives a more accurate picture.
Defenitly not SGP.
Bizarre gender verdeling ook
> PVV
> Henk
Uiteraard
Ha! You can see all the parties with old-af people also have the most Jans.
18 comments
Tomorrow the Dutch provincial elections will be held and a recent analysis ([nos.nl/l/2465934](https://nos.nl/l/2465934)) showed that ‘Jan’ is the most common first name among the candidates. A natural question is then whether this still holds per party? We therefore made a word cloud for the twenty largest parties in terms of the number of candidates and selected the ten most common first names.
Some caveats:
* The party *Forum voor Democratie* only publishes the initials of their candidates and not their first names. This unfortunately meant they had to be excluded from the analysis.
* Not all candidates had a gender published. These were imputed.
* Names were coloured according to the candidates’ gender to easily distinguish them visually. Be careful, though, not to conclude from a word cloud looking blue/pink that the majority of candidates is male/female. By selecting only the top ten most common names we are namely cutting off a potentially long tail with rare names.
* The name ‘Jan’ sometimes occurs as parts of other names such as ‘Jan Willem’ or ‘Henk Jan’. We considered these to be genuinely different names, but a more thorough analysis that shows how common it is might lump such compound names together.
* This visualisation was made for fun and word clouds were chosen to make the most common name pop out visually. The use of word clouds is discouraged in general because the human eye is fairly poor at comparing areas. For more serious purposes lollipop charts would be a better alternative.
So if you blame Jan for *anything*, you’re likely corrext!
Jan Modaal
[According to the Meertens Institute](https://www.meertens.knaw.nl/voornamen/populair.html) a whopping **11%** of men born between 1880 and 1961 had Jan as their first name.
Probably DENK.
Volt heeft een zichtbare voorkeur voor mensen waarvan de namen met een A beginnen
Maakt dit diagram ook onderscheid tussen vrouwelijke en mannelijke Annes of Henny’s? Of wordt pas achteraf het gender gegokt van een Anne of een Henny?
Waarom zitten er zoveel Arie’s bij de SGP? dat viel me zelf ook al op
Wist niet dat dat zo’n populaire naam was bij gristenen
Did you get all data correctly? For Volt I recognize mostly the candidates from Utrecht, but they’re participating in 8 provinces, and it appears like you’re missing some names. Can’t really comment on the other parties, but you might have to check them as well…
Edit: oh i get it. I guess you take the 10 most appearing names, but after Bart and Julia, every name is unique so you go alphabetically down the list.
Laat goed zien hoe wij vooral worden geregeerd door mensen die de consequenties van hun acties nauwelijks gaan meemaken.
All the Hanses are likely also Johannes.
Sure, Jan
Henk is ook goed vertegenwoordigd.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! An improved version of the chart can be found here: https://imgur.com/MC0nHTg. Nuud’s question about the Arie’s among the SGP lead to finding a bug, and Borazon’s suggestion to count lijstduwers only once gives a more accurate picture.
Defenitly not SGP.
Bizarre gender verdeling ook
> PVV
> Henk
Uiteraard
Ha! You can see all the parties with old-af people also have the most Jans.