This Week’s (In)Appropriate Names
Aptonyms are the gifts that keep giving. You toss out one or two here on the blog, and readers keep coming back with more. This week’s aptonyms include: A home-schooling…
Aptonyms are the gifts that keep giving. You toss out one or two here on the blog, and readers keep coming back with more. This week’s aptonyms include: A home-schooling…
We applaud their choice. And we thank all of you for listening….
…people who Americanized their given names did better economically thereafter. But how to get around the possibility that those with more energy/ambition were more likely to change names—going from Giovanni…
In our continuing effort to bring you news of interesting first names from around the globe (see here and here and here and here), please consider this recent e-mail from…
…the alphabet are faster at making buying decisions. Why? Kids with the A to I last names were always first in line, whereas kids with last names from R to…
…I can do but be grateful I had my children post-30) and the one on baby names. I was pregnant at the time (just gave birth on June 10th) and…
…change the names of the authors? I can see if you are using a different alphabet you might not have a choice, but would it be normal to take the…
How did a nation of immigrants come to hate immigration? We start at the beginning, sort through the evidence, and explain why your grandfather was lying about Ellis Island. (Part…
…frequency of three names through time gives the main intuition of their result: Here you see the adoption curves, and later abandonment, of three names that were about as popular…
…that everyone should have Hebrew names. To which Talmi then replied: Thank you for answering. I don’t think the government can force people to change their names. It would be…
…the names they happen to pick up — even if the names aren’t very good. It has always struck me that a lot of the things we do and use…
…product. But, just as women with “distinctively black” names wound up just as well off as women with more traditional names, will a “Kohler” really have much of an advantage…
…was; he just said they were some names he liked. Sure enough, she went for one of the names on the list: Sophie. Sophie is a beautiful name, to be…
(Photo: Russ Morris) We should probably start a Strange Name Hall of Fame at some point to chronicle all the weird, wonderful, terrible names that readers have passed along to…
Want to be part of an episode of Freakonomics Radio? We’re working on a podcast about names and we want to hear from readers and listeners about their own names…
…finds that in the U.S. population the names Jerry, Dennis, and Walter rank 39th, 40th, and 41st among male first names. But in the national directory of the American Dental…
A German court recently upheld a ban on surnames that are hyphenated three or more times, claiming long names could cause “intolerable administrative difficulties” for German officials. As Time reports,…
…surveyed associate “traditional” names with positive character traits and non-traditional names with weak performance and bad behavior. The name Kevin has particularly negative connotations; as one teacher wrote, “Kevin is…
…here is the list of names that were on the board, in their original order: P. Diamond D. Diamond Fama French Milgrom Holmstrom Hart Sargent Hall Barro L. Hansen G….
Women in the legal profession with more masculine-sounding names, like Cameron or Kelly, have better odds of becoming judges than women with feminine names, according to a new study by…
…1,884 Bobs, Sanders [of the San Diego Chargers] is the only one still playing. We’ve written regularly about names and how some just go out of fashion. The fact is…
…name is — in this case — Amanda, Rachel, Katie, Peter, Andrew, or David. I don’t have my master database of black-white names handy (hey, it’s summer), but I’m pretty…
Why are humans so fascinated by coincidences? What do Carl Jung and an album by The Police have in common? And what did Stephen win in a bar mitzvah limbo…
…The city has begun posting the names and photographs of alleged “johns” on the Police Department’s Web site for all to see, including spouses, children, employers, friends and neighbors, Mayor…
There’s someone hiring on Craig’s List in Minneapolis: Freakonomics for Baby Names Reply to: jillyouse@yahoo.com Date: 2006-07-11, 9:32PM CDT We are writing a book on baby names and parent occupation….
…someone has to do is cross-index the most popular criminal names with the most popular names in general and break them out according to socioeconomic status, etc. As it now…
…it’s true that most popular names start out among the middle and upper classes and then travel downward, it’s also true that some old-fashioned names (we cite Max and Sophie…
…an amazing list of writers in the past three years, including big names like Stephen King, Jane Smiley, Nadine Gordimer, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, John Updike — and I’m leaving…
…names like Phoebe and Flicker.) In the old days, aptonyms weren’t coincidences; they were professional labels. That’s why there are still so many people named Tanner, Taylor, etc. But in…
…Still, let’s keep playing along. Besides the names listed above, here are some of the other suggestions I liked: Producer, Miracle Box, Exo-Brain, E-Brain, Byte Box, Tether. I also like…
