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While reading through the Alpha pdf, I saw the suggested first names for the characters. Some of them sounded a little bit off, not really keeping with the period. I checked the most common names by decade with the Swedish Bureau of Statistics (it's all online), and for kids born in the 1970's, the top ten were:

Johan
Fredrik
Mikael
Daniel
Magnus
Mattias
Anders
Peter
Andreas
Jonas
 
Anna
Maria
Linda
Jenny
Malin
Sara
Camilla
Åsa
Ulrika
Marie

The 15 most common surnames are:

Andersson
Johansson
Karlsson
Nilsson
Eriksson
Larsson
Olsson
Persson
Svensson
Gustafsson
Pettersson
Jonsson
Jansson
Hansson
Bengtsson

...but if you want more variety, the top 100 can be found here: the 100 most common Swedish surnames.

Thanks. I like it !

It will give us more local color and it should be made for US setting also (and as a guideline for hometown hack setting for community purpose )

It should also be added to the book !

Wouldn't common names seen in the 1980s be names that were popular to give babies in the 1970s and, for older children, the 1960s?

Sorry för highjacking the thread, but does any one know if there are similar name statistics for the US available somewhere? It would be really useful for the US setting, as we will have alternate English names for all NPCs in the scenarios.

Here is a site this is the list of girl names from the 80's http://www.parenting.com/baby-names/lis ... ames-1980s
and here are the top boys http://www.parenting.com/baby-names/lis ... ames-1980s

I grew up in the 80s, and my name is Johan. Almost every kid in my hometown was named Johan.

Sorry för highjacking the thread, but does any one know if there are similar name statistics for the US available somewhere? It would be really useful for the US setting, as we will have alternate English names for all NPCs in the scenarios.

Try the social security website. You can search by decade and the info comes from national census documents.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/index.html

EDIT: You can also search by specific birth year if you want to be more accurate for naming characters of an appropriate age:
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi

Wouldn't common names seen in the 1980s be names that were popular to give babies in the 1970s and, for older children, the 1960s?

I used the tables for the 1970's for the 80's names. It also conforms to what I can observe myself for that generation. SCB name statistics

Wouldn't common names seen in the 1980s be names that were popular to give babies in the 1970s and, for older children, the 1960s?

I used the tables for the 1970's for the 80's names. It also conforms to what I can observe myself for that generation. SCB name statistics

That makes sense. That site is more or less a census site as well, right?

Wouldn't common names seen in the 1980s be names that were popular to give babies in the 1970s and, for older children, the 1960s?

I used the tables for the 1970's for the 80's names. It also conforms to what I can observe myself for that generation. SCB name statistics

That makes sense. That site is more or less a census site as well, right?

Yup, you can see the exact number who had a certain name, and so on. Sweden has records going back to the 17th century.