Slashdot Mirror
Power Laws, Weblogs, and Your Given Name
gummint writes "After contemplating the blogsphere and pondering whether "diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality", consider an old-media domain name: the one your parents gave you. How did they choose it? How many other persons have the same one? Get some facts, or a lot of facts. Or just comment anyway. The good news is that the extent of inequality can change massively over time: the popularity of the most popular given names has decreased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution."
My name is Robert Lee Claypool. I live in Muncie There is another Robert Lee Claypool in Anderson in the next county over.
There was a time when people took pride in their last names. If you hate who you are enough to change your name, how can you expect other people to like you?
I know my own heritage is crucial in my self identity, and I would never give it up, not for all the wealth in the land.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
I'm going to have my name legally changed to something 27 letters long with no vowels, just to watch people try to pronounce it.
Banaaaana!
As the popular films become more pervasive and as the movie industry becomes more proliferous and agressive with its idolization of superstar actors and actresses such as Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Rene Zellweger, etc, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find more and more people identifying their children with those names in mind.
Sort by decade or year of birth. Pretty interesting, imo. It's fun to watch which names stay on the top 10 for decades in a row and which were popular at one point and then declined dramatically.
GameTab - Game Reviews Database
...is ALSO named Bort.
According to Google I'm the only Daniel de Angelis Cordeiro in the world. :-)
And, although some people don't like being Juniors, I kinda do. It's fun, and I don't feel confined by it.
I come from iceland, which has a much smaller population then most other countries, so obviously there is a lesser chance that anybody else has the same name as I. Still there is another Arnór Heiðar Sigurðsson in my country, and it's not that uncommon... so I'm wondering if there could simply be fewer names in iceland... hmmm? I'm just posting for the fun, I don't even know if what I said makes any sense... :)
When I was a lad still living on the Indian reserve I asked "Father, how did you name me?" he replied "Son, when a new child is born into our tribe, the father looks at the landscape and names the child after the first thing he sees.
I nodded "Ok, go on."
"For instance," my father continued, "your sister 'Soaring Eagle' was named after an eagle I saw high in the sky. Does this answer your question, Two Dogs Fucking?"
Trolling is a art,
First name from one Grandfather. Middle name from the other Grandfather.
The only beef I have with my name is that my first (Jon) sounds fairly common, but is spelled strangely. Which means that every time someone asks my name to put of a form or a list or something, I have to decide whether to give them my name and then quickly spell it before they put it down wrong, or just let them put down J-O-H-N.
Or I'll just give them a different name entirely. I wait for food orders and restaurant tables under my sons name, since it's fairly uncommon.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
liberty, equality, fraternity.
well great, fraternity is always nice (course women really aren't part of that, and it aint by accident). but if you know anything, you've known from the get go that liberty is the root of inequality. in the USA people typically equate equality to the equality of opportunity (like mortgage lending, or head football coaching gigs for blacks and other minorities). over in france, they seem to prefer a more absolute version of equality, but that kind of equality comes solely at the expense of freedom!
why this long rant, when this stuff is about blogging, not about france???
i can't answer that either, but if you're upset that nobody reads your blog, maybe you're just having alot of gallic thoughts that day, poor you.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
After my parents die I'm changing my name to something less generic. With hundreds of competitors, I need a name so distinctive it shoots me to the top of Google search results.
Maybe it's because I haven't had enough caffeine today. Maybe it's because I just got back from lunch and I'm really sleepy. But could somebody please repost this topic in the King's English? What's up there sounds like a whole lot of nonsense that has nothing to do with anything. Post something a little more sensical, please.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
My name is Richard Pathroupoulous Arkansis. Does that bother anybody?
So my parents didn't have to think hard about my name.
Forced imitation is the least sincere form of flattery.
This may come to a shock to you, but my heritage has very little to do with my self identity.
i've turned down 1000's for my namesake .com
.words 'value' are going anti-gravity again.
some other
no amount of namechanging can hide lack of integrity.
lookout bullow.
But, for the past 11 years or so, my name has ranked in the top ten according to SSA.gov. Personally, I preferred when it was rare and obscure.
Don't you hate when there's several people with the same name as yours? I know more than 10 different "Miguel Farah" besides myself, and that's only within my family.
That's why most spanish-speaking countries keep using the two names + two surnames (the father's and the mother's) method for the full name of a person. That way, my full name is "Miguel Braxton Farah Fugate", which decreases dramatically the probabilty of a name collision (even more for people with relatively uncommon surnames, like myself).
This practice was started somewhere in the Middle ages, and while it's not as good as a unique number or ID, the cases of people with two identical full names are very rare.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
My first name is a fairly common one, but my last name is fairly rare. Of course my Grandfather on my Father's side was adopted, so pretty much anyone with my last name that I don't already know isn't related to me. (My Grandfather's birth surname is very popular)
Oh great I thought, I'm actually on the list of
f 80 s.html
top 1000 names for the 80's! (Nigel)
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/1999/top1000o
Then I noticed I just narrowly beat out Elvis, Osvaldo,
and Roosevelt. Sigh, it must be Friday.
Getting facts is usually best done before the link to them is posted at slashdot. After that, it often proves quite hard.
"Two beers or not two beers. That's the question." -- Shakesbeer
- 1940s not even in the top 1000
- 1950s #622
- 1960s #242
- 1970s #26
- 1980s #14
- 1990s #15
and that's about where Ryan has been stuck now for 10 years, floating between #17 and #12.I was born in 1974. I wonder what happened in the 1950s - 1960s that caused such an upswing? I can't think of any popular celebrities named Ryan from that era. Any insights?
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Number 46 player
1 big long Kiobasa, right up the poop chute.
makes for great sauce!
Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 minute since you last successfSlow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 minute since you last successfSlow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 minute since you last successf
appears to be lost in the sands of time.
For now, I will call it 404-Unavailable.
Sent from your iPad.
I grew up in Jersey, nobody used thier real name. Everyone had a nickname or several. CB Handles, userids and Everquest characters are all variations on the same search for a unique identity. I really earned the Sir.
Wanting a unique name has nothing to do with hating yourself. I do not define myself by my name, but others do. It is natural that after I become an adult I would want input into such a basic thing as the identifier by which people know me.
Changing my name does not change my heritage. No one's heritage is that flimsy. A different name doesn't change who my father or his father or his father's father was, or where they lived, or what traditions they practiced.
Twin #1 (boy): First name Haines comes from his great-grandad (and oldest living relative). Middle name is a family name from waaaay back.
Twin #2 (girl): First name Hillary was just something we liked the sound of, although we LATER found out that if I or either of my brothers had been girls, we would have been a Hillary. Too wierd...
Baby #3 on the way is to be named Harrison - partly because we like the sound and partly to a friend of the family who was a prominent writer and social critic.
I think my favorite part is that none of these names is particularly common, yet they are familiar and carry some tradition...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
My mother had this idea that she was going to name me Robert Keith, but call me Keith. My dad asked why they couldn't just name me Keith Robert. Mom said that it "didn't sound as good." Dad asked what difference it made how it sounds if nobody would use it that way. Dad's Lesson Learned: Do Not Argue With Pregnant Women. I think he slept in the garage.
At my birth, Mom took one look at me and decided that I was the spitting image of her grandfather. She decided to name me after him, so she called me Robert Scott. Problem is, her grandpa's name was DAVID. For a long time, I thought it must have been the painkillers talking, but Grandpa David was born in Scotland, and so everyone called him Scotty.
He *hated that. He thought it was akin to calling someone Polack, or Czech-boy, or Canook. He probably spins like a gyroscope every time someone uses my name.
Scott
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You've got nothing on me...my last name is Coke.
Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to order a pizza and have the delivery guy bring a 2 liter bottle of Coke as "part of your order" Wait, that's not frustrating, that's convenient.
Then there are the people that just have to ask, "Wow, are you an heir of the Coca-Cola fortune?" Rather than go through a tiring explaination, now I just answer, "Yes, I'm a billionaire. Now could you please super size that order?"
I was named 'Dylan' after the cool dude rabbit in the Magic Roundabout (a British kids show in the 70s). Well, my Dad claims it was Dylan Thomas, but I had to face endless torture at school by being named after a rabbit who was always stoned on marajuana.
Unfortunately, I've found out that an actor shares my name (Dylan Smith). I'm just wondering when I will get the first UDRP attack on my domain dylansmith.net (if the little puke tries to get dylansmith.co.im off me he's got a fight on his hands as I live right next door to nic.im)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
He's also, apparently, the reason that it's so fucking cold.
Saw a billboard today that said 'Jesus is the reason for the season.'
I would think that it has to feel kinda fake, and detract a little from the success. I can't imagine spending the formative years of my life being Jeremy Whiporell, then becoming 'Jack Whip' and being famous. I'd always feel like a bit of a fraud, as if who I really were just wasn't good enough. Kind of schizophrenic, when you think about it.
The only example I can think of off the top of my head is John Mellencamp, who I distinctly remember debuting, and performing for years, as John Cougar.
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
In high school I had several classes with more than six classmates with the same first name as myself. Luckily no two of us went by the same derivation. I have a fried with the same first and last name as myself. There is also a minister in my town with the same first and last name as myself who lives three blocks away on the same street as I do. This has probably cause him a world of embarrassment.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
that this, in and of itself, is indicative of a severe insecurity in your own self identity?
Interesting.
KFG
A couple of years ago, I did a google search for what most people usually call me. Imagine my surprize that nearly all the hits were for a male escort (who was later featured on an MTV True Life "I am an escort" special and got arrested during the filming) There were pictures of him washing cars, and in cowboy outfits and as mardi gras boy. Needless to say, since I am trying to make a name for myself in the academic comunity, I have started going by my FULL name on everything I get published to eliminate confusion. I can only imagine someone reading a paper of my and then looking my name up on google only to find mardi gras boy....
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Isn't that enough, I ask.
Nothing rhymes with Bart...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I legally had my name changed. My given name was really boring and I was getting nowhere in life. So I looked for a new name and found one on my wife's hairdryer.
Max Power!
Now I get all kinds of attention.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
My last name is Case, and my father wanted to name me Justin. My mother threatened him with unspecified dire consequences.
Best Slashdot Co
The most aggravating thing is when there is someone popular only to a very narrow group of people... And that group of people aggravate you constantly thinking I'm someone else...
I have been tempted to tatoo the following on my forehead...
"No, I'm Scott Medlock the Unix Dude, not Scott Medlock the Golf Painter"
---
My surname was anglicized when my great-grandparents came to America. I would like to revert it to its original form. However, I now have children and a wife. Would it be difficult to change my name and my children's names as well? My kids are still very young. Has anyone experienced a name change in their childhood? Did it have any adverse effects on your self-image? Also, converting it to its original would automatically label them as a specific ethnicity/nationality. Can anyone give any insight as to what it is like to have a surname which is obviously from a specific country? (hint: I would be adding an O' to the beginning and changing the spelling slightly--save the alcoholic jokes for someone else). Thanks for the input.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
like Apple employee Bo3b Johnson (author of the Sillyballs DTS sample code). It certainly gave his common name a geeky uniqueness.
S'common as muck; certainly not a very interesting name; but I really don't like being called anything else. I don't like it being abbreviated to "Steve"; and I don't use an online pseudonym, because being called anything other than "Stephen" just feels wrong.
:-)
My parents didn't give me a middle name, because middle names are unnecessary. Although neither of my parents are geeks, not giving me any unnecessary names was geekishly efficient of them, I think
-Stephen
The college (University of Texas at Arlington) I went to had a fairly large Vietnamese population. In a somewhat large history class I took (probably 150 people), there were two people with the exact same name. They both had the last name of Nguyen, which is the Vietnamese equivalent of Smith basically.
The professor ended up tacking on the last digit of their SSN whenever he referred to them.
I was having a little thought experiment going through these lists of names and such, and something dawned on me. It's fairly obvious from the data on these lists that men's names hang around a lot longer than women, and generally, it seems the top 10 was very stable in males (up until very recently, I had no idea Jacob was that popular...) while female names change top 10 at least once a generation. I was thnking why this happened, and when you think of female names, there are definitely "old" sounding names compared to males. No one thinks James or Robert sounds old, but Mildred and Ruth sound like older women's names. The one thing that came to me is that women "don't want to end up like their mother" while men look up to their father, even after he chops your hand off in a lightsaber battle. It seems like women's names gain a stigma of "old", and it's worse for a woman to be old than a man, so women name their daughter's newer, cuter names, where men respect their elders more (or something), so continue the line of Michael's and William's. Or I'm a sexist nutjob who should actually be working at work instead of reading /.
Th
(I am also a Michael, btw)
Slashdot: You shoot yourself in the foot, but no one notices since you are (-1, Offtopic).
Obligatory Office Space comment...
I admit it, I'm a Michael Bolton fan! I celebrate the guy's entire collection! For my money it doesn't get any better than when he sings "When a Man Loves a Woman"!
My first name, I regret to say, was taken from a member of the 1966 World Cup-winning team because my father is obsessed by football (that's "soccer" to you 'merkins).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
In some parts of India, newborns get their last name as being the first name of their father. This can really cause headaches, for example, in proving your family name.
And exactly how is this different from the usual Slashdot posting?
I'm guessing that you're single, and not (yet) seriously considering children. Had you even come close to the Childbirth section of your local bookstore, you'd have been deluged by books such as Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana : What To Name Your Baby Now.
You haven't stumbled on to anything new here.
Or check out one of the "Moms To Be" chat boards - the importance of selecting the right name is a Big Deal, and always has been. One can't pick a name that's too popular, or too obscure. And there's that unpleasant shock when the "perfect" name has been found, only to find that it's the rising star of the Baby Names Top 10 List - back to the drawing board.
Perhaps the most important issue is "teasability". You can have hours of fun with your spouse, shooting down every name they think up by turning it into a childish taunt:
You : Yeah, I can hear it now: "Come here, Mister Dunkin' Donuts!"
Her : Isn't there any name you like?
You : I'm just saying... But now that you mention it, have you considered "Guy"?
Her : No. Have you considered an frontal lobotamy?
Hours of fun, kids! Those 9 months of pregnancy will be gone before you know it.
Personally, I've found the most effective strategy is to waffle until the baby's been born. Then, once your wife is back in the recovery room, all doped up and groggy from pain that men can't even imagine (thank goodness for epidurals and pain-induced memory blocks), pop your suggestion to her:
Her : (groggy): Hrm? Bosco? Yes, I'm thirsty...
You : Excellent! Roscoe it is! Wasn't that easy?
Thank goodness for blogs on slow days like this!
I always thought that when saddled with a name like "Kirk Israel", it would at least be unqiue.
Nope.
And I'm not even jewish...I come from Germans who came to the USA (pre-world wars), wanted to dodge the German/Prussian draft, and changed their name and all the records they could find. And then chose something Semetic sounding, so they would be seen as less than desirable soldiers for Der Fatherland.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Privately held names ^_^ I am pretty sure due to this + other reasons that I have a 100% globally unique name.. In fact i'd go as far as to say I have a globally unique middle+surname combo..
is inugo montoya. You killed-a my father. Prepare-a to die.
My old man was an Anonymous Coward, too. I think that we're distantly related to Noel Coward.
Are we French???
This hilarious webpage lists a very large number of truly awful baby names. Most notable is the new trend of intentionally misspelling names to make them unique. Horrid! If I ever suggest doing this to my kid, dear readers, please tie me up in duct tape and throw me in San Francisco Bay.
sulli
RTFJ.
Princess Stephanie, maybe?
Fuck the Frogs. Fucking rifle-dropping cocksuckers.
What's with the Ragnar-Ragnarsson thing?
Can you hear me, Major Tom? I'm not the man they think I am at home...
Christopher Jason Smith
When I had shoulder surgery in 1993, there was another Christopher J Smith there for the same basic operation, on the other shoulder. Of course the anesthesiologist switched the files! Basic idea was to put meds in one arm, operate on the other. He was rather offended when I yanked the I.V. out of my arm while asking "what are the first 3 numbers of the SSN on that chart?" Ten minutes later, after some ID checking and whatnot, I was on my way to dreamland.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What exactly is the pronounciation? Is it something like "ka-ching gal"? :)
Notice how these comments are getting horrible ratings? Well, it makes sense; they're almost all worthless.
Why? Well, what interesting/insightful/funny comment can be made on this subject, especially on slashdot?
This is a discussion forum with a general tradition of *avoiding* usage of given names. Right off the bat, this causes abortive comments like, "I have a really interesting name, kinda like this other name, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, because my boss might be googling me."
And what insight can a techie offer about given names? Yeah, some of us have the same name. Some don't. They serve a useful purpose, but not one really worth talking about.
I guess some names are sorta funny, and some naming stories are funny, but nothing that's going to make you wet your pants. I know of a guy whose parents wanted to give him an English name but didn't know any English themselves, so they grabbed a book for inspiration... and named him "Oxford University Press".
See? Ok, but who would moderate that up past a 2?
New discussion: how can we help our slashdot editors to select better discussion topics?
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
back when i was in high school, google told me a was an older computer science book writer. i thought how cool, that was the major i wanted to go into when i get into college. now that i'm older, and caffine is starting to give me the shakes, it says today i'm a young teenager who has uncontrollable seizures.
i'm not making a very good name for myself...
--Anonymous Coward
As someone who works with a record set of 100,000 thousand names, you would be amazed how far a middle name can go to distinguish you from other Stephen Williams. It would at least keep you from getting a username like "sw38947"
My folks and their folks went to Canada after the War. The last name on my maternal side wasn't a problem, but nobody *but nobody* but a Dutchman could pronounce Knegt, so they Anglicized and translated it to Knight.
Then my mother went an named me after an author who had the same name as one of the inventors of the airplane and some guy who later became famous for popcorn. (Also Sgt. Snorkel's first name in Beetle Bailey.) I was 30 before I actually met someone else named Orville.
I changed it in the middle of my college years. Sorta. In a bass ackwards sort of way. I changed my middle name, which was also my father's first name and my youngest brother's first name (he goes by his middle name) -- and use that almost exclusively.
So I've still got the last name acquired after immigration. I've still got the first name my parents gave me. And I go by a name I chose for myself. (The Jansen is a pen name -- son of Jan, which is my father's original Dutch first name, but he goes by John these days.)
I know who I am, but without some documentation, future genealogists could get massively confused....
According to the Old Testament, God gave Adam the power to name the birds and the beasts -- thus giving Adam dominion over the natural world.
Similarly, in her "Earthsea Trilogy" series, Ursula K. LeGuin emphasizes that everything has a true name, and that this true name is what wizards use when conjuring.
In my own line of work, I've learned that good programming begins with good naming conventions.
Everything has a name -- even if it's nothing more than "Hey! You!"
-kgj
This has caused me a great deal of consternation over the years.
Mom's brother always went by his middle name, and used his first initial only for his legal signature. (I'm not certain if that was his choice or my grandparents.) Mom thought "J. Scott" would be a nice signature, and so I was named John Scott. I have never in my life been called anything other than Scott by my family.
Fast-forward a few decades. Databases that accept only first name, middle initial (all required fields). Systems (like my employers) who require using a login based on first name/last name. The government wants all three names, and will then never let go of "John".
At one time I was thinking of legally changing my first name to an initial only (J.) after my parents died. Going through the job hunting gig of late, with all the attendant forms, I may not wait that long.
Top Five boy names:
Jacob
Michael
Matthew
Joshua
Christopher
All biblical names. Of course this doesn't track for the female names:
Emily
Madison
Hannah
Ashley
Alexis
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
My own family didn't have last names until after the First World War and the loss land and power after that war. We were identified by our membership in particular Royal houses. We were addressed as Emperor, or King, or Duke, or Prince with the appropriate titles that went with it.
With the First World War and beginning with the English Royal Family abandoning it's German roots by adopting the name of Windsor, they set the tone for the dismantling of the house system. My great-great-granduncle, German Kaiser Wilhelm II at the time of the English abandonment of their heritage, remarked that he always enjoyed the comic operetta "The Merry Wives of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha," a reference to the British Royal family's true German name. Two of those house names are also part of my name.
My own grandfather, an Archduke in the Austrian Empire had to abandon his titles and adopted a name that was taken from the name of the his ancestral home in the south of Austria. He was later appraoched by Hitler to help with the union of Austria and Germany, but categorically refused him. After the anschlus in 1938 his vocal anti-Nazi stance got him into more trouble and his lands were seized.
This is all probably not very interesting, and I'll probably loose a few karma point by this post. But who cares? There is no such thing as Karma anyway.
You know, perhaps this is a bit off topic but while slashdot is nicely on the subject of names I'd like to b**ch about mine: Aaron. Pretty common name. Lot's of well-known cases: Elvis Aaron Presley, Aaron Spelling, Aaron frere de Moses, etc. Why then does everybody insist on spelling it wrong? I'm not a girl! The only way I ever seen it spelled for my gender is the way I have it spelled now. What planet does everyone else come from? In my 30+ years of life probably two strangers have ever spelled it correctly, and that is not an exaggeration. Maybe I should just make everyone happy and change it to Erin instead.
Just my 2cents.
Do you *really* expect us to believe that you'd be the same person whether you were raised by Christians, Muslims, atheists, or animistic bushmen?
Your ideas of who you are depend massively upon such things, and it's just silly to pretend otherwise.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
How common is MY name? Let's put it this way, it is usually faster for me to have support personnel or customer service look me up by my first name than to enter my SSN.
A google search (at least for the first few pages) reveals information about me and my dad. And that's about it.
Of course, I keep assuming that the number of Ewan's will rise after the actor - but at least in the US that doesn't seem to be the case.
Just another data point...
So, I have a question. I'm 14-years-old and I've been Stephen Smith (Stephen after my step-dad's middle name, "Stefan," of Romanian descent) all my life. So, I'm looking through that red filing cabinet with all of the important stuff in it at my mom's house (parents are divorced--mom's last name is Saftoiu [Romanian] and dad's last name is Smith) and I find the birth announcement. Guess how my name is spelled? Stephan. Unfortunately we couldn't find my birth certificate to verify anything. I asked my mom about it, and she was just as stunned as I was. So what do I do? It would be kind of embarassing explaining to people why I'm all of the sudden changing my name, eh? But man, Stephan Saftoiu would be infinitely better than Stephen Smith (unfortunately there isn't much of a chance of me being able to change my last name to my mom's last name).
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I'm a Michael as well. I looked up My first and last name to see if there was anything on the internet about me. Interesting things...
There's a Dr. Michael Worrell at the Grand Canyon University.
There's a cricket player in Barbados.
There's a Michael Worrell who started the Worrell 1000. Sad thing about tht Worrell 1000 is that until a few years ago, they had T-shirts online.
Iron Sailors - Plastic Boats
The party's over
Huh?
This is single-handedly the worst posting I've ever read on slashdot.
But then Cher has done well
Please do not use Cher as an example. Like Jack Valenti, Cher has voiced her support for copyright terms as arbitrary close to perpetual as possible, stating that she'd accept "forever less a day" to fit in under the U.S. Constitution.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Time for the old saw about Mohammed being a very common first name and Chen is one of the most common last name, but Mohammed Chen is very rare.
What about the guy who changed his name to this?
- the name should exist or at least be pronouncible in as many languages as possible since you can never know where your children will live in this ever-shrinking world
- the name should not be in the top 10 of the last years
It looked sensible to us to use names of the Old Testament, as it is the foundation of three of the major religions.Sebastian
Damn V-day! First, my bastion of geekness tells me I need a date. Now, one hour later, it tells me I have a kid and I have to name it.
ACK!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I was lucky with my name. It's easy to remember.
Although when I was younger and the kids didn't know what the word "stoner" meant, they called me Joe Boner.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
For more information about this joke, read the truth about Penis Van Lesbian, or rather Richard Wayne Van Dyke.
Will I retire or break 10K?
For my kids it's different - my wife and I gave them a double-banger surname "Levitt-Campbell" - mostly this was a cop-out - we didn't want to do the usual patriarchal thing ... but obviously they can't keep on doubling the size of their names for every generation either. However in retrospect We've given them something quite special ... unique names on the internet - they are the only "Levitt-Campbell"s out there which in the future may well be a great thing
She would be "pesos pesos pesos pesos pesos exyGal"
Let me guess... You live in the USA?
Or Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia? :)
Considered harmful.
Uniqueness is the important thing. I think my full name is unique (which is handy) though there are other "Joe Blakesley"s - there is a famous one apparently in the Oxford Concise Dictionary of National Biography who was quite big in the church (thought I'm not religious).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Don't you hate when there's several people with the same name as yours?
Whoo. Yeah. That drives me nuts.
-Waldo D. L. Jaquith
I've been thinking about getting a hold of other Malcolm Lawrence's across the planet (geez, there sure are a lot...I wonder if any of them are also born on Valentines Day too) and seeing if they'd like to form a Malcolm Lawrence club. Imagine the laffs: "I was chatting with Malcolm Lawrence Uruguay yesterday and he said the same thing that Malcolm Lawrence Silver Springs said..."
My name is Carlos Montoya. You share files of my music. Prepare to die.
I always figured that if I have a son I'll name him "Hung Well" or something else that will make him popular with the ladies. If it's a girl, she'll be named "girl with Herpes who will chop off your penis while you are sleeping and has a father who owns a shotgun". It might be long but I'll sleep better when her hormones kick in.
It turned out that the name was legit, and belonged to a new employee who was Vietnamese. Apparently he had gotten hired the previous weekend (I worked weeknights), because he showed up that Friday night and couldn't find his card. I introduced myself to him, and almost couldn't refrain from laughing when he told me his name. I declined to inform him that I was the one that tossed his card, of course.
He was a nice guy, once I got to know him. Apparently his name is a common one where his parents were from (anyone remember the singer Don Ho?). He took a lot of abuse from several of guys I worked with, but was cool about it.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Mine is Dennis Allen Carr. Middle name was the obvious selection (my father's name (OK, his was Roy Allen, but he went by Allen)), but my father picked my first name by opening to a page in the north Orange County, CA white pages, closing his eyes, and letting his finger fall until he got an appropriate name (IE, not a female or business).
This sig no verb.
I am the third Ronald in a row...
:-D
Not that that is a bad thing, you get to keep monogrammed items as heirlooms I guess
crazy dynamite monkey
What drives me nuts is that I know three other Joseph Zbiciaks. Fortunately, I have a different middle name than any of them. I actually have two middle names. :-)
(Also, my grandfather -- one of us four Josephs -- passed away some time ago, leaving only three of us to be confused about "Which Joe?")
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
consider an old-media domain name: the one your parents gave you.
Let me tell you - I feel very fortunate to have a unique last name. This is one of the reasons: My "old-media domain name" and "new-media domain name" match!
Very handy, when telling people your email address.
I never meet people with the same last name as me. The only ones I know are family. Whoo Hoo!
Hey - Yahoo's sneaky: Yahoo Domains reserves (says "taken") lastnamefirstname.com in their domain search. Must be because I have a yahoo account?
Believe it or not I am one of the few people in the world that has a 100% unique name.
It's very American as well. Throughout all of time, there has been no other with my first and last name combination.
The reason for this is because my first name was never used before the 1800s when my ancestors moved to America. I've got most of the family tree traced after they crossed over and unless it's a very young person that I don't have record of, I'm still unique.
Because of privacy concerns I don't want to post it here, but if you really want to know it shouldn't be too difficult to trace down.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I think not.
She has secrets.
in whole america with my last name... in Europe there is my father, my brother, and that's all. I have spent dozens of hour in almost all directory/search engine etc and found noone with my family name
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I bet that name is unpopular to give your kids :-)
Jeff, Jeffrey, or God forbid Geoffrey has been in a free fall since I was born.
:(
When I was born (70's) Jeffrey was still a respectable 15 (having rocketed to number 10 the previous decade). Now, however, it comes in a dismal 121 right after the dreadful, Tristan, Eduardo, Paul, Carter, Edward, Jaden(!), Brendan, Kaleb(!), Oscar, Hayden, Joel, and Colton.
Jaden is my friends cat's names for chr*tsakes, the humility!
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
I don't know how most people choose their kids names, but I'm glad my parents deliberately went for an out-of-fashion name for me. I have a friend named Robert John Miller who not only knows many other people named Bob, but actually had another Robert John Miller in a class of his in high school. I, on the other hand, have never met another Abe, and another Abe Thurtell, I'm happy to say, doesn't exist. Of course, part of that was luck--for one thing, they missed with my brother, as Adam became a popular name exactly around the time he was growing up; and for another, if my dad's last name had been Smith, there would be someone else in the world with the same name as me, no matter what. But I like having a unique name, anyhow.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
I don't plan to reproduce, but if I ever end up doing so, the kid's gonna have a lot of middle names:
Authorized Employees Staff Private Restricted No Permission
There will be no door that my kid couldn't go through...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
and I have an entire site devoted to other people with the same names.
It's certainly been an interesting thing to watch!
Jory
I've always been fond of my name: Kaz Riprock.
It has a certain Flinstonian air to it.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
I just made those up, but do you see how annoying it is? The "X, Y, and Z" title format is naturally grandiose; it says to the reader, "Brace yourself! The following incredible story will arc from X, to Y, and then all the way over to Z!"
Perhaps if employed less sparingly, the "X, Y, and Z" title format could be effective, but this being slashdot, it rarely delivers on its promise. When I see a slashdot article in this format, I know that the actual story will be about some lawsuit which pertains directly to Z, but only tangentially relates to X or Y.
Explains a lot about about me, dont it?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
AS long as your intent is not to defraud or decieve. Don't worry about it, except for the irs or maybe passports.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Actually, choosing a baby name will still drugged up after giving birth isn't really that great an idea. My cousin's boyfriend goes by "Nick" but his name is actually "Nickalouse." Yep, you got that right, it isn't a typo, that's how his name is actually spelled! When he was born, his mother was so drugged up that when they asked her how she wanted to spell his name on the birth certificate, that's what she told them.
As for unique names, my younger brother's name is Jedidiah. Some guy on my sister's hockey team thought that my family was Amish because of my brother's name--he was confusing it with Weird Al's "Amish Paradise."
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
- My senior year in high school, my parents got a letter saying that I was being suspended for "lack of attendance." The thing was, I was actually attending school. There was a sophomore named Matt Jones and the school sent the letter to the wrong house.
- While working at Intel, one of the five Matt Joneses there sent an e-mail to the rest of us explaining that a co-worker girlfriend of one of the us (not me) had called his house over the weekend and was rather suprised to hear Mrs. Matt Jones answer the phone...
- I just wish that debt collectors would get the right Matt Jones. I get these calls about twice a year. And each debt collector requires me to tell them my story on about three different phone calls before they remove my number.
- Just last week, a former employer of an apparently not-so-great Matt Jones called me up demanding for my address so he could send me my W-2. It took about 15 minutes to explain that I was a customer of the company, not an employee.
- In college, the basketball star's name was Matt Jones. I used to love it when professors would ask me about the game the night before. See, I'm a 5'9" Polish Italian. The other Matt Jones was 6'5" and had a very African heritage.
I've considered posting a blog for other Matt Joneses of the world to share their stories. Anybody interested?I know a guy who named his cat "Meeyower", because the cats says "Meeyow" ....
-kgj
I don't generally read my code out loud in public -- if I've got an audience I prefer to sing the code. There's nothing quite like "Ode to a C++ Pointer" to get the crowd going ... :)
-kgj
From 1900 to the 60s, it steadily declined in popularity, then from the 70s through now, it's been gaining in popularity. It's more popular now then it's been in the last century- what caused the turn around?
The world's longest name officially used by a person is "Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Senior" which is composed of 28 words or 192 letters.
Google it!
Not trying to troll here, But I would appreciate some "blog" topic. Articles on "blogging" are currently all over the categories, like this one in Films. Most of the crap that includes terms like "blog" or "blogsphere" involve some pompous blowhard with an inflated sense of importance ranting about triviality. Okay, so that describes most of slashdot, but regardless, a blog topic would be nice so I can filter all this stuff out.
Bureaucrat approves ---
uh, what was the name?
And I didn't realize there was still a "Prussia" as such. What part of Germany is it?
I would have used Madonna instead; though she's 0wn3d by Time Warner, I couldn't find anything on Google indicating that she has voiced support for copyright term extension or for a ban on circumvention of fair use denial mechanisms.
Even better: Prince. His name is Prince Rogers Nelson, but he goes by his first name as a stage name and for a while used the unpronounceable[1] symbol O(+>. And he has voiced support of marketing big-label music through online downloads.
[1] Some people pronounced O(+> as "Frog".
Will I retire or break 10K?
wrote a bit on that in Destiny's Child, Indeed
...
Excerpt:
Since 1998, the Office of the Chief Actuary (a division of the U.S. Social Security Administration) has published lists of names in popularity order by gender and birth year from samples of Social Security Number applications. Curious parents-to-be can find the top 1000 male and female names from the year 2000 online - culled from a sample of 2,089,457 boys and 1,996,763 girls.
Female name "Trinity" is #74 in popularity - 98% of which are probably children of obsessive "Matrix" fans hoping for boy next so they can name him "Morpheus" (a name which I predict will break the top 100 list in about two years). Be on the lookout as single white mothers with children named "Trinity" start dating bald black men to make little Morpheuses with.
The Pjammer Chronicles --
According to the SSA stats the name Eula fell out of favor in the 50's after a half century decline from 131 to 623 to out of the running in the 60's.
I doubt there will be a revival of the name any time soon. It would be hard to be a girl named Eula today, too many bad experiences with EULA "gotchas".
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
Bet ya can't guess what my name is. Anyway, I decided to go and see who else has my name. I found:
The International Eric Jacobsen Page
Eric.Com
The Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs (member example)
I could care less who has my name. We're each as original as the next one with our name. I don't think it's that much of a big deal, really.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
...I think Limozeen Z'Nuff is a damned fine one to start off with.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
man, i'm not even going to continue reading comments if the first one I see is "My name is Joe Schlabotnik and wouldn't you know it, there's another Joe just down the block? wow!"
It's a fucking name. There are 6 billion people on the planet. There's going to be some overlap.
This isn't insightful.
Change your name to "José da Silva". You'll be unique in Iceland.
But, boy, don't ever come to Brazil!
Stop that stupid "hate the French" thing.
First, it was not about US in the begining -- it was between _Britain_ and France.
Second, that was hundreds of years ago, idiots. Your grandgrandfather wasn't even an idea by that time.
Third, of course you want war, after such an horrible tragedy (I mean WTC). But other people would rather think twice before destroying entire countries (not that some don't deserve it). This is called being civilized -- unless you're a caveman, then you call it "sissy".
yup, i got that same problem,
even after 4 years, sprint PCS still wont correct it
gonna stop paying the bill since my name aint on it.
You are incorrect sir.
Just commenting for fun, like a few others... I'm one of those people who you can google for and the first several pages are mostly, if not all me. ^_^;
My father is of Hindu descent, so for both my sister and I our parents took us to a pandit (ie. Hindu priest type guy), who assigned a name based on what time and date we were born.
I used to want a Western name like everyone else when I was a kid, but now I'm glad I have this name. I really don't know what kind of names I'll give to my children if I have them, but I won't go for what may embarrass them in later life. (The other person that turns up in googling for me is also an Indian artist, so that's pretty cool!)
My friend's cousin is named Ima. Her last name is Pigg. I think her parents should endure Chinese water torture and other nasties for what that poor girl had to endure through her school years.
:P So, she returned home, and I remained nameless here forevermore... Err...too much Poe, sorry. I only remained nameless for another hour or so, actually. The midwife told my mother, "look, you NEED to put SOMETHING on your son's birth certificate." Each morning previous, my mother would wake up and say "hi, son" to me. So, at four days old, I was finally given a name. Hysun I became from then on. I don't know how she arrived at the spelling, but it looks Chinese enough. :P
:P
My niece's name is Penelope. Of course, she goes by Penny. My brother-in-law's family name is Baggs. Penny Baggs isn't nearly as bad as Ima Pigg, but still...
Then there's the story about the lady who had a daughter in an Atlanta hospital. When the nurse was working on some paperwork, the mother looked over and said, "Oh, you've already given her a name!" "Feh-mah-lay. What a pretty name!" Of course, she was probably on too many painkillers to realize she was reading the word "Female".
My own name isn't funny, but the story of how I got it is, if you're in the right mood... Anyways, my mother is haole (white), and my father is Chinese. I was born at home, with the help of a midwife, so my mother simply took her time giving me a name. She wanted to give me a nice Chinese name, but wanted to go to the library to research it first. Of course, she was in no condition to do so for a few days. It so happened that the fourth day, when she finally regained her strength, was a Wednesday. She went to the library to find it was closed on Wednesdays.
The only other Hysun I've heard of is a certain Korean lady who, by some very strange twist of fate, also shares my last name. Go figure.
I thoroughly enjoy having such a unique name, but as I'm one of those paranoid types, I wonder if something more generic would be nicer. After all, when you can google yourself and find yourself at the first link, you start to worry about identity theft and such...
My $0.02.
-azmaveth
Trinity is a male/female name.
Actually in the spanish culture you have "unlimited surnames", I mean, your first surname is your father's first surnanme, your second one is your mother's fir surname, your third one is your father's second one, etc...
I think I can remember my first 8 surnames.
In fact, you are only asked for your 2 first surnames, the rest are just anecdotal or just to remind your ancestors.
Teh film.
All of this and not a single mention of this site which once almost caused me to spray my computer with half swallowed fluids.
Hey, I'm not sure if you run Linux but I have kinput2 with FreeWnn setup. I want to remap shift+space to the windows key, and can't find any decent documentation (that isn't in Japanese, and as I've already said in the past, I can't read kanji.)
Any knowledge you would be willing to impart upon me?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
scripsit gosand:
What's worse is that I had a student last semester who really did spell it `Micheal'. It was unnerving, because I kept wanting to correct the spelling of his name when I marked his papers.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
ahahahhhahahaahahhaaaaaa!
Who modded this flamebait?
retard.