# Why do people not have more unique names than they do? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 26, 2018, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615 "2018-07-26T13:26:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/41 "2018-07-28T23:44:05Z")
At my (all-boys) high school, we all referred to each other by last name, and obviously, none of us had ever served in the military (even though there were a few who everyone knew would). As for “Life” not being a name in English, that’s not that big of a problem for a middle name. For instance, I have a cousin whose middle name is “Tree” (yes, as in “big woody plant”, and no, that’s not based on some traditional family name). Most Americans don’t learn each others’ middle names at all, unless the owner of the name tells them. At most, we might stumble upon each others’ middle initials, and there are plenty of things L. can stand for. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/42 "2018-07-29T00:15:46Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Whether people want to admit or not, names are visible class markers. Unique names are more common among the wealthy and the poor. It is the anxious middle that studies What Will People Think. If they go with a fancy-sounding name, they worry they will be judged as pretentious. If they go with a lower-class sounding name, they worry they will be judged as trashy or ghetto. > > I understand the fear of coming up with a unique name. “Jennifer” sounds like an okay name now, but I imagine when it was first concocted, it got some eye rolls. How would it not? It kind of sounds like a obscure mammal. So I get the fear. What I don’t get is naming someone an extremely common name. Barring a family tradition of naming a child after someone else, I don’t understand why “John” would be someone’s first pick in a name. And I don’t know why someone would deliberately ride the trendy name train. Seems to me if a name is on the top of the baby naming charts, the inclination would be to come up with a very different name. Jennifer = He Who Carries Jenni. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/43 "2018-07-29T00:25:26Z")
> [@Weedy](#): > > Trendy names sound modern. And people hear them a lot in a baby context so they sound familiar and right as a name for a baby. > > I have a very unusual first name. When people see it, they don’t know how to pronounce it, even though it is pronounced the way it looks. If they hear it spoken, they don’t know how to write it. Then they mix it up with similar, more familiar names. I have to through this with everyone I meet, some people multiple times. A unique name is a real hassle. I go by my middle name now, because it is a very common name that no one gets confused by. I can guarantee that if people don’t know how to pronounce your name, it is precisely because it’s NOT pronounced the way it looks. You’re just using a too-narrow definition of “how it looks”. For a simple and common example, if your name “looks foreign”, that’s part of how it looks. And if it’s foreign-looking, you have to say it funny, everyone knows that, right? 😃 I heard a Swede correct a Hungarian’s pronunciation of a family name. The Swede knew how to pronounce this foreign name according to the rules. Except the Swede used the rules of Polish, and it was a Hungarian name, which the Hungarian (whose own name it was) had been pronouncing correctly all along, because the particular rule in question turns out in Hungarian to be precisely the reverse. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/44 "2018-07-29T01:57:51Z")
> [@DavidwithanR](#): > > Jennifer = He Who Carries Jenni. 🙂 I know that this is a joke, but it is actually a variation/evolution of Guinevere, so a pretty old name. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/45 "2018-07-29T02:27:29Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > Kim, Lee and Park are Korean family names. Are we talking about family names in this thread or given names? If you want to see interesting Korean given names, take a look at a list of the stage names of K-pop idols. Kim and Lee are reasonably common English given names. Park as such is probably rarer than Parker. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/46 "2018-07-29T03:23:36Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Kim and Lee are reasonably common English given names. Park as such is probably rarer than Parker. The OP was giving these names in the context of Korea. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/47 "2018-07-29T05:29:45Z")
My wife has a two-word given name. The first word is common to all her sisters and brothers" the second word is individual. Her family name would have come first, the generational word second, and the individual word last. You may think of her given name as a hyphenated name like Sarah-Louise, or a combination name like Maryanne, but it’s not: it’s one name of two words spelled with a space. You may think of the individual part as a nickname, because that’s what members of her family use, but that’s not universal: other members of her family are just known as “older sister”, “younger sister” and “number 1 son” In any case, she has never met anyone with the same name, and never expects to do so. She had a version of a common family name, but the system of given names means that there are many, many many possible variations. As I understand it, the extension of UTF16 to include encodings requiring multiple 16-bit values, was mostly to include Chinese characters that are almost never used for any purpose other than as names. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/48 "2018-07-29T05:43:36Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > You may think of her given name as a hyphenated name like Sarah-Louise, or a combination name like Maryanne, but it’s not: it’s one name of two words spelled with a space. You may think of the individual part as a nickname, because that’s what members of her family use, but that’s not universal: other members of her family are just known as “older sister”, “younger sister” and “number 1 son” Lots of Spanish names work like that; many Catholic names can work like that, but will do so or not according to language and local customs. Ignatius Antioch or Ignatius Loyola. The first thing Pope Frank said after “I’m going to be a Frank” is “after the original one (Assisi)”, not one of the Jesuit ones (Xavier and Borja/Borgia); Francis Xavier is a single name, not two, because the ‘Xavier’ is there to clarify which Francis. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/49 "2018-07-29T05:49:00Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > Armies have certainly been around far longer, but a permanent, centrally organised military, in the UK, doesn’t actually predate Ms Austen by that long, being only formed after the British civil war (just checked, it was formed 70 years before her birth). Prior to that, it wasn’t far off local lords rounding up the peasants into militias then ordering them about as they saw fit. Not really any overall rules, and certainly no chance that one of the peasants, however skilled, could end up ranking ahead of the lord, or the lord’s sons. > > If you would prefer a reference predating the formation of the British Army, Samuel Pepys, writing in the late 1600s, uses the same style in his diary; gentlemen are referred to by surname, servants and commoners by first. It just really stands out in Jane Austen as she repeatedly highlights it and uses the naming system as a plot point. What I was trying to explain is that the custom was around through some… 2000 years at least, and that it’s not limited to English. Since before there stopped being a permanent, centrally organised military in England. It’s a custom which stayed throughout Western Europe, through the times of no permanent armies, when it was all either levies or mercenaries. And remember that although the levies were supposed to be locals, they weren’t always (naval levies have a specially strong reputation for this but they weren’t the only ones), and although the mercenaries would usually start with people from a specific place, replacements would vary their makeup, and professional soldiers moved between companies and between mercenary companies and local levies (the names given to noncoms vary, but the position has been there since the dawn of war). ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/50 "2018-07-29T06:43:48Z")
I suspect, though, that the main reason U.S. service people refer to each other by their last names in this day and age, is because they have them sewn on their shirts. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/51 "2018-07-29T06:59:22Z")
All of my children are unique in their full names by virtue of the rarity of their surname. But my third child copped a double-whammy by us giving him a first name that is only shared by (I believe) one other person on the planet. Maybe that’s why he turned out weird?? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/52 "2018-07-29T08:32:57Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I suspect, though, that the main reason U.S. service people refer to each other by their last names in this day and age, is because they have them sewn on their shirts. I believe that the names are that way on the shirts because of the tradition, and not the other way around. They could easily get first names put on the shirts instead, but they don’t, because tradition says you use last names. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/53 "2018-07-29T10:16:13Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > What I was trying to explain is that the custom was around through some… 2000 years at least, and that it’s not limited to English. Since before there stopped being a permanent, centrally organised military in England. It’s a custom which stayed throughout Western Europe, through the times of no permanent armies, when it was all either levies or mercenaries. And remember that although the levies were supposed to be locals, they weren’t always (naval levies have a specially strong reputation for this but they weren’t the only ones), and although the mercenaries would usually start with people from a specific place, replacements would vary their makeup, and professional soldiers moved between companies and between mercenary companies and local levies (the names given to noncoms vary, but the position has been there since the dawn of war). I don’t think that was continuous even for the military here, the styling for knights is ‘Sir Firstname’, not ‘Sir Lastname’, and they were the best known permanent trained military rank for several centuries. Medieval stories and records seem to default to firstname where later ones would use lastname. Another issue is that in Celtic tradition, as retained in several areas of the UK, most notably Wales, surnames were more-or-less optional and weren’t really fixed. When asked for a surname, people would give nicknames clearly acquired in adulthood, or simply their father’s name (or occasionally Mother’s name, if she was better known) and wouldn’t necessarily give the same version every time (‘But I’m not a smith any more!’). Drove the English Gentry (who had established family surnames) up the wall by all accounts. This didn’t fully die out until the early 1900s, when record keeping got more serious in even the most rural areas. I’ve heard claims, though probably apocryphal, that that’s why there are so many Joneses in some areas of Wales- the people sent by the English to take a census just got fed up and stuck ‘Jones’ down for anyone who wouldn’t give a name that fit the official format 😃 It’s possible, thinking about it, that that’s where the use of surname as a respectful name originated in English, as the wealthier descendants of the Normans had family surnames when the poor peasants sometimes did not. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/54 "2018-07-29T10:33:23Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I don’t understand why “John” would be someone’s first pick in a name. My son’s name is John. And as a matter of fact, he is named after someone. He is named after my oldest childhood friend, who sadly died when we were 34, four years before my son was born. His parents were very good friends with my parents, and we all always remained close throughout my life. I just saw them at my mother’s memorial. But that aside, John is not actually very common right now. I know it is the Ur-common name, but the generation my son belongs to is so full of children whose parents reached for the unusual, that there are very few Johns, Michaels, Stephens, and soforth. My son is 12, and in school, he has encountered so far, only one other John in a class with him, and in addition to that a Jonathan who went by Jonny. (My son goes by Johnny.) By contrast, he has had five Liams (two of whom were actual Williams, and the rest of whom were not), three Dominics, three Cades, four Crews, and about 30 variations on the Cayden/Jayden/Aiden/Hayden theme, all names I never heard until after the year 2000. (Well, I did know one Dominic in school, but he was English.) > [@Nava](#): > > Lots of Spanish names work like that; many Catholic names can work like that, but will do so or not according to language and local customs. Ignatius Antioch or Ignatius Loyola. The first thing Pope Frank said after “I’m going to be a Frank” is “after the original one (Assisi)”, not one of the Jesuit ones (Xavier and Borja/Borgia); Francis Xavier is a single name, not two, because the ‘Xavier’ is there to clarify which Francis. As a kid, I lived down the street from a Roman Catholic family with, IIRC, 11 kids, 7 of whom were girls, and each one had “Mary” as a first name. They had different middle names, so they were something like Mary Catherine, Mary Theresa, Mary Angela, Mary Bernadette, Mary Joan, Mary Margaret, and Mary Elizabeth. They all went by very mod nicknames, if I can get them right: Cat, Terrie, Ellie, Dee, MJ, Meg, and Liz. A couple of them, Ellie and Dee, used to babysit for us a lot. Cat was already out of the house, but I remember her, because I thought Cat was the coolest name I’d ever heard. I remember Terrie, because she played guitar, and was still kind of a hippie, with the longest hair I’d ever seen, even though it was the mid-70s. Liz and Meg were around my age, so we played together, but they went to a Catholic school, so I saw them mostly just in the summer. I don’t remember much about the boys, except there was a set of fraternal twins. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/55 "2018-07-29T12:00:31Z")
Is there evidence that most people use names with which they are familiar? It seems reasonable. I don’t see how it creates problems; even if someone, personally, knows more than one person named “John”, I am sure they can tell them apart. If someone is bored, refer to the thread on the popularity of library books for the model where a book’s popularity undergoes a sort of exponential decay, and see if that model fits the use of names. You would have to take into account the recycling of old names. John is not _too_ popular right now; the most common new names right now, let’s say in England, include Jack and Jacob, along with Oliver, Harry, George, Noah, etc. (but definitely not John), and of course Olivia, Emily, Amelia, Isla, Ava, etc., for girls. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/56 "2018-07-29T12:31:23Z")
> [@DavidwithanR](#): > > I believe that the names are that way on the shirts because of the tradition, and not the other way around. They could easily get first names put on the shirts instead, but they don’t, because tradition says you use last names. The shirts are that way because of \*uniform \*traditions and regulations, and the naming is because of the shirts. If they didn’t have their names on their shirts, maybe they’d call each other by their first names. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/57 "2018-07-29T12:58:06Z")
Do they have to go by the names on the shirts? E.g., in _Full Metal Jacket_ you had Joker, Pyle, Cowboy, Crazy Earl, Animal Mother, Snowball, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2018, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/58 "2018-07-30T12:54:27Z")
I suspect that both the choice of names on the shirts _and_ the choice of which names to call each other are both due to the greater variety of last names. Even “Smith” is shared by less than 1% of English-speakers, but “John” has been as high as 8% of English-speaking men. It’s declined in time, but was still around 5% for men born in the 1920s (i.e., those who would have been fighting in WWII). A decent-sized group of men is likely to have multiple guys with the same first name, but not likely to have multiple with the same last name unless they’re brothers. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2018, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/59 "2018-07-30T13:15:08Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Anyway, any name like Richard, Catherine, Christopher, Helen, George-- way off limits to the Puritans. They even avoided the names Joseph and Mary, Matthew and John, because the Catholics loved them so much. Sorry, I’m late to the party on this comment, but I’m genuinely interested. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that Puritans would be averse to names such as Richard, Catherine, Helen, George and Christopher - so very common in Protestant England, and Oliver Cromwell named his son Richard. Joseph and Mary I can understand as they’re so commonly Catholic. But Matthew and John? I wouldn’t have expected them to object to the apostles? ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2018, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/60 "2018-07-30T13:22:16Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > If you would prefer a reference predating the formation of the British Army, Samuel Pepys, writing in the late 1600s, uses the same style in his diary; gentlemen are referred to by surname, servants and commoners by first. It just really stands out in Jane Austen as she repeatedly highlights it and uses the naming system as a plot point. I’d agree with this. In a class based structure, your ‘family name’ is also something you are judged by/wear with a badge of honour. ‘John’ means nothing to no one, but ‘Fotheringay Phipps Herbert’ carries standing in the community. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615.md?page=4)