Tuesday, January 23, 2007

How many of me are there?

Here is an interesting web site called HowManyOfMe.com. It allows you to enter your first and last name to find out how many people share your name in the USA. There are 69 people with my first and last name. There are 89,991 people who have the same first name as me and 230,976 share my last name. And there I was thinking that I was unique.

I thought that I would test out the saying that John Smith is the most popular name in the western world. On entering John Smith I discovered that Smith is indeed the most popular last name but John is the 2nd most popular first name. There are, apparently, 49,535 John Smiths in the USA.

It turns out that James is the most popular first name with 50,214 James Smiths.

The top 5 most popular first names, in order, are: James, John, Robert, Michael, Mary.
The top 5 most popular last names, in order, are: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown.

Addendum: I've just searched my wife's name which truly is unique. There are zero people with either her first or last name which indicates that she herself does not exist.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear about your entirely sudden and completely unexpected loss...

I do hope your wife's recent non-existence won't prevent me from ever having the pleasure of meeting her.

Guy Ellis said...

When I see her this evening I will certainly question her on her non-existence.

In the meantime I notice that you have exercised the American right to create degrees of uniqueness. :)

Anonymous said...

Aahhh, you missed another important aspect of BEING an American;
I didn't even have to EXCERCISE to gain my uniqueness. It came to me as if it were (and probably is) a BIRTHRIGHT!

What red-blooded American would actually EXCERCISE to get something?!? That's CRAZY talk!

And speaking of American; do question... no interrogate your previous wife on her status. We don't truck that kind of behavior here!

Anonymous said...

Your links are constantly something else. Worth looking at? Not always, but either make one crack a smile or wonder what you’re up to.
The good thing about this one though, it’s that there is now evidence that the voices in my head have been right all along...It turns out I truly am one of a kind :D