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...and her nationality.

I'm British. I know two women called Deirdre. They're both Irish. It seems that the name had fallen out of favour in Britain by the 70s, but was still fashionable in Ireland until at least the 80s.

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Could be related to the character on the long-running primetime soap Coronation Street. She started in 1972.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_Barlow

Corry's been shown in Ireland since 1978.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street#International...

Not saying it's not the reason for the divergence, but it seems less likely.

A lot of Irish households have access to British TV stations like BBC, ITV etc. and could have watched it there.

Since Deirdre is an Irish name, it is possible that the decline in popularity (among the general population) in the UK was at least partly due to increased anti-Irish sentiment in the 1970s.

There is a lot of variation in names by nationality. Lots of Irish names (esp. female names) can be very hard to pronounce, such as Aoife, Oonagh, Caoimhe, Niamh, etc.

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