Wednesday, April 11, 2007
How many of you are there?
Found this cool thing which supposedly searches US census data to find out how many people have the same name as you.
According to the site, there are 138,726 people in the US with the first name Maureen. 99.9% of whom are female. Go figure.
Surprisingly (to me) only 39,205 people have the last name McGowan. I thought it was a more common name than that. And only 18 with the combination. Wow. I feel pretty unique.
Oddly, at my old job there was another Maureen McGowan. I know this because of Lotus Notes... but she was in London, England.
How common is your name?
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6 comments:
I checked...
There are none in the US apparently, but I do know of at least three in Canada..
But then again.. with a name like Sinead...
I looked more closely at the site and it just estimates based on probabilities. And doesn't take into consideration that some first names and last names are more probable to occur together. Like, for example your first name is more likely to be with your last than with, say, Valdez.
Their explanation of the accuracy is pretty funny. Accuracy info
Only 28 people with my name. I checked my maiden name as well. Only one poor soul who has it. I guess I'm pretty unique. :)
I've always been fascinated by names - having been saddled with a moniker that was definitely not the popular Cheryls, Carols, Janice's and Susan's of my youth.
So I was not surprised to find out that zero people had my first name and only 3,317 my last. And I am unique with the double whammy of Nelsa Roberto.
Question is: will my unique moniker look good on a future book cover? In my neverending dreams it does. But I'm thinking people want easy to remember and not weird and unique. But, darn it, I've had to deal with it for so long I won't give it up now (well maybe a variation of it: Nellie Roberto anyone?)
I think Nelsa Roberto is an amazingly strong author name. It's different, easy to remember, and easy to pronounce. Isn't it? People don't mess up your name, do they?
Thanks, Maureen. But you'd be surprised at how often I get Roberta instead of Nelsa! :)
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