News You Can Bruise for 2008 April 8

Permalink [Comments] (6) Tue Apr 08 2008 19:11 Namespace Collision:

Today Leonard Lin linked to Beautiful Soup. I've never met Leonard but we know many of the same people, and so I keep running into traces of him and getting confused. Danny O'Brien once cced me on a mail that made no sense because I wasn't the Leonard he'd had a particular brainstorm with. Then there was the time I was on a consulting job and started encountering comments like "Leonard suggests X" in code I'd never seen before. Yup, guess who.

If my name was Dave I'd probably be long over this, but there just aren't very many Leonards. According to government statistics, 7 in 1000 Americans in my age cohort are named Leonard. That sounds okay but it's only 1250 people. But on the other hand, I'd only need to meet 98 people before I had a better-than-even chance of meeting another Leonard.

Male names versus percentage of births.

I'm mainly reproducing this graph because I like the way the x-axis is labelled. "Leonard" is right near the tick to the right of "Roy". Incidentally, "Leonard" is even less popular now then when I was born, having switched popularities with "Leonardo". Pre-Web I sometimes found it a burden to have an unpopular name, but now on balance it's great. I guess what I'm saying is, name your kid Leonard.

Comments:

Posted by Sam Ruby at Tue Apr 08 2008 22:18

I'd suggest that Post-Web, the relevance of being "in my age cohort" is significantly less. I routinely collaborate with people a decade or two younger or older than me. Mostly younger, these days. :-)

Posted by pedro at Tue Apr 08 2008 23:29

What will be interesting is to see if the "flattening" of the social agespace by the Internet will also extend to the ebbs and flows of the baby namespace. Sure, it may be that Crystal Lynn will come back into fashion in 2013, but when will the Leonards have their day?

Posted by Kris Straub at Wed Apr 09 2008 00:24

Clearly, in the far future -- in the year Leonard000.

Posted by leonard at Wed Apr 09 2008 01:59

hi leonard! :)

Posted by jacob at Wed Apr 09 2008 02:24

whoa! i know a brice, two garrets, and an emil!

Posted by Evan at Wed Apr 09 2008 12:16

Names: coming to a long tail discussion near you...

The right hand side of that graph is dominated by names that will get you a !@# kicking in grade school.

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