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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."
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
- 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"
Favorite stat from 10 seconds of perusal:
Popularity of the name Trinity:
Year of birth Rank
2001 67
2000 74
1999 216
1998 555
1997 547
1996 687
1995 683
1994 821
1993 951
Curious, isn't it. Something seems to have caused a sudden jump in popularity in the middle of 1999!
While i really enjoyed the matrix, i can't say that it ever occured to me that it would cause a sudden spike in people naming their daughters trinity.
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
- 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
Might work in some polynesian languages. You can go entire sentences in Samoan w/o using a single consonant (well... unless you count the glottal stop). O a'u ia (I am a fish). OK, that one may not come up often, but I seem to recall that the word for "learning" also has no consonants, so "I am learning" wouldn't have any.
And I've met Samoans whose names were entire sentences. Fa'alelalolagi (like that which is below the heavens, I think).
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Also note that the name Richard drops out of the top ten in 1971 following Watergate (and still declining).
- 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?