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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."
My name is Robert Lee Claypool. I live in Muncie There is another Robert Lee Claypool in Anderson in the next county over.
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
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,
My name is androgenous. My wife refused to consider naming our daugther junior.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
This may come to a shock to you, but my heritage has very little to do with my self identity.
Do they really say Dollar Dollar Dollar Dollar Dollar exyGal?
Banaaaana!
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"
Many countries have laws to prevent this sort of thing. Im not sure about the U.S., but Germany requires that someone be named with an "appropriate" name, and in the case of dual nationality, they should have a name appropriate in both countries. A recent example was when a Turkish couple wanted to name their child Osama, but that was not allowed.
Previously in Belgium, you had to use a name from an approved list, which means that if you were dual nationality Belgium/Spanish, Miguel would become Michell, or Santiago may become James.. (Im not positive what santiago would become, its just an example)....
but anyway, in many places, I dont think you can actually change your name to: qwrtpsdfghjklñzxcvbnm....
But then Cher has done well.. I should change mine to "Z", just like MIB...
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
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.
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!
Harrison and Hillary...no prob....but I feel sorry for your son Haines....do you have any idea how many underwear jokes he's going to suffer during his childhood??
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
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.
Make it all vowels. With no vowels, people will just assume you're Polish.
Besides, AaaaaaaaaiiiIiiiIIEeeeeeEEE is a great name.
-JDF
My last name is Case, and my father wanted to name me Justin. My mother threatened him with unspecified dire consequences.
Best Slashdot Co
Fart.
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
Boromir wrote: 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.
Keep in mind that you and your family are only the stewards of Gondor.
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
Come on Fhqwghads, everybody to the limit.
The Cheat is to the limit.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
There were six people in your high school class named "RatBastard"?
The preceding comment has been reviewed and declared to be compliant with HIPPA Phase II regulations.
Actually I think the most applicable quote is this one:
Michael: Yeah, well, at least your name isn't Michael Bolton.
Samir: You know, there's nothing wrong with that name.
Michael: There WAS nothing wrong with it. Until I was about 12 years old, and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.
Samir: Well, why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael?.
Michael: No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!
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.
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.
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"
I think the point is that personal names follow "power law" distributions - IE. despite lots of freedom of choice in names, popularity still tends to clump towards a very select few. For example: look at the popularity of names like John or William, consistently in the top 10 over the last 100 years. I haven't looked at the female names as closely but they seem to be more prone to variance. Perhaps it's a result of a greater tendency of males to be named after an ancestor, whereas female names seem to follow "fashion trends".
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
> 'Nayked party of 4'.
I know a couple whose last name is Jesus. They went out to dinner after an event with a group of people. The reservation was for 'Jesus, party of 13'
Proof of their existance
-- johnmc.
Looks like you're safe for a few hours, at least.
The TROGDOR comes in the NIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
S
- 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 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?