FOI Ref: FOI/2022/4019
You asked
Please supply the statistics for the numbers of boys called Ian or Gary every year from 1994 to present day (18/03/2022).
We said
Thank you for your enquiry
We hold the following analysis: Baby names for boys in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). Data is available from 1996 to 2020.
Table 6 contains all boys named where there are 3 or more registered each year.
If Ian or Gary do not feature in one of the outputs, it will be because the count is less than 3. It is necessary to protect the confidentiality of uncommon baby names to prevent the identification of individuals and the potential linkage of these data to other datasets. Further information on the ONS policy on protecting the confidentiality in tables of birth and death statistics is available.
To aid visual interpretation further there is a baby names interactive data visualisation tool. The tool shows how names have changed in popularity since 1996. To help users identify changes within the published tables, increases in rank are denoted by a + and decreases with a -. New entries into the top 100, when ranks for the year are compared with ranks for another year, are denoted by an asterisk. A colon is used to denote when a name has not previously been included in the rankings, that is, it had a count of fewer than three in the comparison year.
For years where we are unable to provide detailed data (prior to 1996), the top 100 rankings put together by the General Register Office (GRO) are published for all possible years (1904 to 1994 at 10-yearly intervals). Counts are not available before 1996, which affects the comparability of baby name statistics prior to this date.
If this does not meet your needs, we may be able to create a custom output. Information on baby names from 1996 to 2020, along with other special extracts and tabulations of life event data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
2021 data will be published late 2022. As such, the information you have requested from 2021 onwards is exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.