Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Popular Names

hey guys, check out to see how popular your name is. I just stumbled across this (yesterday, actually- but the boards were down), and thought some of you might find it interesting (and useful).

Popular Names

Desiree

That's an awesome site. I've always been a little fascinated by names. I love the way this graphically displays the information!!

Turns out that my given name peaked in popularity in the 1950's (well before my time). Rona seems to have peaked in the 1960's and then fallen off the map. Interesting!

Some highlights:
Clark: Peaked in 1890's
Lois: #21 in 1920's
Jimmy: 1940's
Perry:1890's, then again in 1960's
Lex: Never peaked as a boys name- however
Alexander:2003
Martha: 1890's
Jonathon: 1980/90's
Lucy: 1890's
Catherine: 1910's
Nigel: 1990's
Ellen: 1890's
Bobby: 1940's
Sam: 1890's new peak in 2003
Jack: 1930's/2006
Mayson: never!
Bill: 30's
star: as starr in 1950's
Dan: 1950's/60's
ralph: 1920's
Herbert: 1920's
tempus: duh, never
Maxwell: 2003

What kind of crummy site is this? LabRat doesn't even feature! Frankly, I'm shocked.



My other name - the one I use on Sundays - apparently peaked in the mid-70's and has gone into sharp decline since. People have no taste these days. :p

LabRat

Mine made top twenty in the fifties, but now it's down in the 500's.

Elvis made it to 787 in 2005. I think it's quite a nice name for a cat, but not a baby.

Mine peaked in the 1970's at 43, the decade I was born My husbands name peaked in the 30's at 73. Neither of my kids names have made the top 100 yet, lol.

Tara

Well, mine peaked in the 1950s and 60s, appropriately, when I was born.

Smiley, you talked about the rank of Jonathon. Well, I know one thing for sure - it was much lower than the rank of Jonathan. To me as a Swede, it is Jonathan that is the 'real' name, the one I grew up with, really the only one I had ever heard until people started spelling Jonathan Kent's name with an 'o' in fanfics!

In Swedish, by the way, 'Jonatan' is a popular name, but 'Jonaton' or 'Jonathon' is impossible. The reason for that is that in Swedish you pronounce all the vowels clearly and distinctly, so that an 'o' never sounds like an 'a'. And it seems just plain wrong to us to spell and pronounce Jonat(h)an with an 'o'. Doing that feels as wrong to us as it would to you to spell your former American presidents' names with an 'o' - you know, like Abrahom Lincoln, Richord Nixon, Williom Clinton or George Walkor Bush. Or how about the United States of Americo?

Ann

P.S.: I copied this from a site I found on the Internet. It's the principal cast of LnC. As you can see, Jonathan Kent spells his name with two a's!

K Callan - Martha Kent (photos)
Michael Landes - Jimmy Olsen (season 1) (photos)
Dean Cain - Clark Kent/Superman (photos)
Teri Hatcher - Lois Lane (photos)
Lane Smith - Perry White
Justin Whalin - Jimmy Olsen (seasons 2-4)
Tracy Scoggins - Catherine "Cat" Grant (season 1) (photos)
John Shea - Lex Luthor (season 1)
Eddie Jones - Jonathan Kent

Another useful one is How Many of Me? which tells you how common a name is likely to be in the US (as of the 1990 census). I can't remember where I first heard of this site, apologies if it was here. So for Clark Kent:

There are 39,507 people in the U.S. with the first name Clark.
Statistically the 897th most popular first name.
More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Clark are male.

There are 51,663 people in the U.S. with the last name Kent.
Statistically the 675th most popular last name.
Famous people with the last name Kent:
Jeff Kent

The guesswork part comes when it puts them together and says "There are 7 people in the U.S. named Clark Kent." - it's statistically dubious because there is no attempt to work out the ethnicity of names, or the likelihood of the combination if there are other factors such as e.g. people not wanting their son to go around with a fictional character's name.


Tried a few others

Lois Lane - 334,292 Lois, 164,107 Lane, 181 Lois Lane.
Jimmy Olsen - 293,265 Jimmy, 60,780 Olsen, 59 Jimmy Olsen
Perry White - 77,495 Perry, 847,885 White, 216 Perry White
Catherine Grant - 566,776 Catherine, 182,341 Grant, 340 Catherine Grant
Jonathan Kent - 475,606 Jonathan, 51,663 Kent, 81 Jonathan Kent
Martha Kent - 626,037 Martha, 51,663, 106 Martha Kent
Lana Lang - 44,066 Lana, 63,819 Lang, 9 Lana Lang
Lex Luthor - Neither name is common enough to do statistics.

That's a cool website Marcus. Here's my stats:

* There are 607,803 people in the U.S. with the first name Stephanie.
* Statistically the 82nd most popular first name.


* There are 0 people in the U.S. with the last name Pfenninger.
* This name is not found in our database, this means the name is relatively uncommon.

My hubby is probably related to every other Pfenninger in the US.

Mine peaked at 53rd in the 80's, when I was born. (And interestingly enough, the names of my parents and both of my mom parents peaked in the decade they were born)

According to Marcus' site, there are 81 of me in America, although you can spell my surname 4 different ways. If you use the most popular spelling, there are 155.

Anyone else find it strange that Dorothy made the top ten for girls' names? I expect they're all over 60 now, but still.

Re lex - just tried Alexander instead of Lex and Luther instead of Luthor, and got 203,619 Alexander, 15,803 Luther, 11 Alexander Luther. I have no idea how common the Luthor spelling is - obviously not very - but you might still end up with a couple.

Both my first(57th) and middle(27th) names broken the top 100 for popularity. On the how many of me list my last name does show up. It says for privacy sake that uncommon names aren't listed. Well I know for a fact that there are over 100 of us because we are all the decendants of the same people - father and his sons who came over in the late 1800's. How can I be sure of this. Our name is one of those that was changed at Ellis Island. Also if you contact any one with the name they can tell you which of the ones that came over they are decended from.

Here's another useful one someone on Livejournal found.

Picking character names is tough. Often it's not the major characters who cause the brow to furrow, but the walk-ons who nonetheless need proper nouns. Most random name pickers take no particular account of name frequency, so you get those weird spam header appellations like Lucretia T. Melon or Lyndon Flywheel.

Hit the link below and you get four names, two male and two female, based on frequencies derived from census data. You get a statistically common name and an oddball pick for each gender. Refresh and you get four more.

http://www.unled.net/

Shockingly enough, my first name is reasonably common, but my last name...not at all. Then again, there are only two people with my name in the world, and we're second cousins. And technically, there is no one else with my name since we have different middle names.

Of course, Capes features nowhere either, so I'm good to go.

My first name is in the top 100. And my married last name is statistically #1, resulting in almost 6,000 people with my name. Which is why I kept my maiden name at work - it appears that there are only 14 of me in the whole US.

I saw a documentary once about a man named Alan Berliner who tracked down and brought together all the other Alan Berliners (worldwide there are thirteen, I think). It was called "The Sweetest Sound" and it was an interesting look at how our names shape us.

Great find, Marcus!

You might want to take a look at "Are You Dave Gorman?" the true story of a British comedian called Dave Gorman who as the result of a bet set out to find as many other people by the same name as possible, and ended up with 54 of them (including several people who changed their names!). It's VERY silly...

Later edit - forgot to say that there's a Wikipedia article about it, since there was a TV show, stage show, and book about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Dave_Gorman%3F

Desiree, I'm sorry I was a bit grumpy earlier. I've been looking a bit more at the site you showed us. It is so much fun!!! Thanks for posting a link to it!

Ann

My real first name was not in the database. My real surname is the 45th most popular.

There are 25 Alisha Knights, though!