After a herculean data collection effort spanning no less than two decades (1996-2015), the world-renowned European Research Group have today published their ground-breaking longitudinal study on British baby names. Despite lavish funds provided by a European Union research grant, publication of the results took somewhat longer to deliver than foreseen.
One research finding immediately stands out: the immense, consistent yet wholly unexpected impopularity of Brexit as a baby name.
Indeed, to the utter astonishment of the global (yes, global) research community, British parents have overwhelmingly preferred more euphonic names: Euron, Euros, Eugene and Euan, not to mention Britney. However, not a single baby boy or baby girl was christened Brexit.
The following table says it all:
| First name | Frequency (Boys) | Frequency (Girls) | TOTAL |
| Euan | 4860 | 0 | 4860 |
| Britney | 0 | 999 | 999 |
| Eugene | 384 | 0 | 384 |
| Eunice | 0 | 277 | 277 |
| Eugenia | 0 | 72 | 72 |
| Eugenio | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| Euron | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| Euros | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Brexit | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Bored already? Time for a somewhat related video
OK, back to science now
Asked for a scientific explanation, ERG lead scientist dr. Made-Up Cheese-Smog was quick to pinpoint the limited scope of the study. The truth is: as soon as the well-informed UK people had decided in 2016 to leave the EU, European funds had dried up, almost overnight. Also, desperate pleas for bridge funding to the Cayman Islands government had been unsuccessful. As a result, post-2015 baby names had not been included in the study, causing a completely understandable divergence between hallucinatory delusions and common-sense reality.
In short: Brexit could have meant Brexit. Only it didn’t.
Despite all these setbacks, the European Research Group have no plans to give up. On the contrary, a follow-up study is already in preparation. As dr. Cheese-Smog explained, both the striking uniformity of Brexit’s longitudinal distribution and its intriguing gender neutrality (zero occurrences for boys as well as for girls) do require further research.
Anyway, since the recent trade deal with Switzerland and Liechtenstein, money’s not an issue anymore. That’s sorted then.