Posted by Jay Livingston
A new cohort of French 18-year olds took the baccalauréat last month, but the names at the top and bottom of the distribution are pretty much the same as last year.
In France, kids’ names are a pretty good indicator of how well they’ll do on le bac – the test that determines how good a university they can attend. As I blogged a year ago:
| A little data ’bout Jacques and Diane
Two French kids taking the college entrance exam. Over in France it’s known as le bac Diane often gets très bien, not so much Jacques. The baccalauréat exam taken by French students at the end of high school serves as qualification for university admissions and scholarships and for certain jobs. Those who pass at the highest level get très bien. The other levels are bièn, assez bièn, pass, and not pass. For some reason, the government publishes the results for each prénom. This year, 89 students named Jacques took the exam. Of these, 75 passed, but only 11 of them at the très bien level. |
That was then. It’s also now. One of sociology’s crucial insights is that rates are remarkably stable even though the individuals who make up those rates change from year to year. The Dianes who took the bac in 2017 are not the Dianes who took it the year before, but their rate of très bien was again over 20%. And as ever, the kids with Anglo names – Kevin, Jordan, Dylan, Anthony, Samantha, Melissa, Cindy, et al. – cluster at the low end. Less than one in twenty managed a très bien.
Baptiste Coulmont (here) created this graph of the 2017 results.
(Click on the chart for a larger view.)
As in previous years, the highest scoring names are female. Of the fourteen names with more than 20% among the très bien, Joseph is the only male.
The chart shows only the more popular names. For more on some of the rarer names – Guillemette, Quitterie, and others – see last year’s post (here).
UPDATE: July 9. M. Coulmont now has an interactive chart (here) with data for the years since 2012.
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