# How many people in the UK share your name?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [February 7, 2004, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034 "2004-02-07T21:41:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Dinaroozie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinaroozie)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/41 "2004-02-08T12:10:18Z")
There are 89,919 people in the UK with my surname, and a grand total of one (1) with my first name… that’s kind of cool. Naturally, nobody shares my full name.
~ Isaac
PS It’s worth noting at this point that Isaac isn’t my real name.
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### Author:  [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/42 "2004-02-08T12:14:18Z")
22 people with my full name. Probably all in Scotland.
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### Author:  [@hybrid\_dogfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hybrid_dogfish)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/43 "2004-02-08T12:27:07Z")
Hmmmmmmm, there are 146 people named David Gorman in the UK. Just think, armed with this information and an inexpensive internet electoral roll report, Dave Gorman could have finished his book far more quickly, although admittedly, it wouldn’t have been as interesting.
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### Author:  [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/44 "2004-02-08T13:03:40Z")
> [@Fern Forest](#):
>
> 2 people in UK have my given name. I am as rare as a wombats wingnut.
Ditto, although since I was born in the UK, I suppose I _could_ move back and make it three.
My father’s family is from Wales, where as many from the UK might know, there is a paucity of surnames. My paternal-maternal great-grandmother (i.e. my paternal grand-mother’s mother) managed to marry three men during the course of her life, all named Tom Jones. And Jones was her maiden name.
Oh, and my grand-mother’s name was Grace.
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### Author:  [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/45 "2004-02-08T13:06:46Z")
Surprisingly there are only 12,547 John Smiths.
Seventeen names in my address book are unique in the UK, and ten more are shared by only two or three people. One friend _was_ unique before she got married, but then it seems her husband doesn’t exist at all! I’ll have to ask him why he’s off the register, because I know he does vote.
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### Author:  [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/46 "2004-02-08T13:52:56Z")
78,916 people with my first name:
There are so many of you that if world war 3 ever happens it’ll just be Pot Noodles, Tescos Basics Lager, Cockroaches, Samanthas, Squirrels, Kebab meat and Volvos left on the earths scortched surface.
10,511 people with my surname. Considering my bizarrely fertile family, I’m probably related to most of them.
31 people with my full name:
I like this number. It’s somewhere between here and over there. I wish I was there rather than here. Any Invites?. Well done keep it up. P.S. Watch out for the robots.
My daughter’s name combination is unique (at the age of five, she’s not on the electoral roll), but a variant spelling of her name brings up two results.
I live with two women; one of them has seven co-namers, and the other has six. I always knew they were wombats’ wingnuts.
I’m surprised to find there 831 people with my mother’s maiden name - it sounds really unusual!
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### Author:  [@Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bren_Cameron_1)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/47 "2004-02-08T15:32:10Z")
Well, there are ten people with my name. There are about 1,500 people in the UK with my last name. I can pretty much depend on being related to them one way or another, actually. My first name --225,268.
The US phone listings show 200 people with my last name.
there are actually 40 people with Mr. Cameron’s last name, and one with his first and last name. It’s not him, because we don’t live in the UK.
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### Author:  [@Yossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yossarian)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/48 "2004-02-08T15:42:16Z")
First name: 1,264,441
Last name: 128,751
Both names: 3,391
My full name can almost double as an alias.
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### Author:  [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/49 "2004-02-08T16:11:39Z")
There are only 24 people with my full name, but there are 59,622 people with my last name. And 19,016 with my first name. So only a handful of people believe that the two names go together. I think my last name is common in England (we’re not English) and my first name is common in Ireland or Scotland, which might explain why they’re not often paired.
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### Author:  [@RNWebner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RNWebner)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/50 "2004-02-08T16:30:59Z")
00000000000 people with my first and last name
3 people with my last name
4 people with my last name, but with “Z” added at the beginning. weird.
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### Author:  [@Tuco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuco)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/51 "2004-02-08T16:37:41Z")
There are 91,000 with my forename, 546 people with my surname, and 4 with both.
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### Author:  [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/52 "2004-02-08T17:16:53Z")
There are fifteen people in the UK named Robin Cartwright. I’m not one of them, but if Airman’s uncle marries his longtime SO, there will be two Robin Cartwrights in the same family.
Robin
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### Author:  [@Lucretia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucretia)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/53 "2004-02-08T17:31:30Z")
> [@everton](#):
>
> Have you read Dave Gorman’s book **Lucretia**?
No, I haven’t. What did the good Mr. Gorman write about?
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### Author:  [@SnoopyFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnoopyFan)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/54 "2004-02-08T18:03:40Z")
There are 2 people with my married name. So I’m apparently “rare as a wombat’s wingnut.”
With my name as it was before I married, there’s 1.
There are 1,889 people running around the UK with my maiden surname.
There are 6,978 people in the UK with my current last name. Not surprising considering DH’s ancestors were English Lords way back in the day.
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### Author:  [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/55 "2004-02-08T18:16:56Z")
**Lucretia:** The first time I looked at the site linked from the OP, there was an ad for his most recent book, and I thought the banner would always be viewable, but it’s not there now.
His first book, [Are You Dave Gorman?](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091884713/qid=1076263222/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_11_2/202-0363505-4408638) told the story of what happened when a bet with his room mate got wildly out of hand. The bet was whether he could locate another real life Dave Gorman somewhere in the world for each card in a deck, plus the jokers, i.e. 54 Dave Gormans.
[Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091891965/qid=1076263222/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/202-0363505-4408638) is his follow up to that. If you type two words into a search engine and run the search, typically you’ll get lots of hits or none. But if you get only _one_ hit (a “googlewhack”) there’s only one site that mentions those two words. For most people it’s just a game to play with a search engine, for Gorman it was a springboard for an adventure to find the sources of several sites in person.
Gorman’s a funny guy with a tendency to go on weird quests and find humour in the results. If you find only one reference to your name on the [www.yournotme.com](http://www.yournotme.com) site, you’ve combined both his adventures in one without leaving your screen (but without having as much fun).
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### Author:  [@Atreyu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atreyu)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/56 "2004-02-08T19:23:22Z")
Even though I’m not in the U.K., I gave this a try anyways.
32,552 with my surname.
669,377 with my legal forename (Michael).
52,424 with my middle name as their forename (Scott). I did this search because my middle name is the name I go by.
672 with my legal forename and surname.
4 with my middle name as their forename **and** my surname.
Interesting stuff.
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### Author:  [@TroubleAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroubleAgain)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/57 "2004-02-08T20:39:00Z")
1240 with my last name, 3089 with my first name, not a single one with both.
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### Author:  [@Invisible\_Chimp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Invisible_Chimp)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/58 "2004-02-08T21:10:55Z")
There are 265, 543 people with my surname in the UK. There are 2,979 people with my forename. 6 with both. I am not one of the six since I live in the US.
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### Author:  [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/59 "2004-02-08T21:13:42Z")
'Nother angry squirrel here. No one with my surname, 27 with my forename and 5,561 with my forename as their surname.
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2004, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-in-the-uk-share-your-name/228034/60 "2004-02-08T21:36:48Z")
> [@AngelicGemma](#):
>
> No one has my full name.
>
> 31896 people share my first name.
>
> 167 share my surname.
There’s a Gemma in every class in every school in every county in Britain… you _must_ have an unusual surname 😉
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