Funny I know electrical engineers names Bernard, Alfred and Eugene all from the same company...
Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
61–70 of 110 posts
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#62In the united states.
Aha funny how people don't define their data correctly, this is an important datapoint
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#63This seems fairly easy to explain: Many given names are passed down through family lines, and many families pass on knowledge, habits, and even professions from generation to generation. There are lots of common surnames that demonstrate this - Taylor, Cooper, Cobbler, Smith, and so on. Why not given names?
Yep my cousin was named George as was My late Uncle as the idea was that he would carry on the family trade as a turf accountants (book makers)in Birmingham.
Note that this was pre legalisation so watching peaky blinders(uk version of Atlantic boardwalk) on the BBC was interesting shall we say
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that scenario, could one claim that "one's name being Elwood means one is more likely to BE a farmer"?
Yup, you got it right. The wording is important. Apparently, if your name is Elwood you're more likely to be a farmer today. But that obviously doesn't mean that kids named Elwood are more likely to become farmers (it could, but I'm afraid you're gonna have to proof that). Wikipedia has some simple examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
In this case, it probably means that people named Elwood are more likely to (a) be older and (b) live in rural areas, both of which are correlated with being a farmer.
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#65Its interesting to see the difference in type of names between Football Coach (Dan, Bill, Mike, Jim, Rich, Steve) and Electrical Engineer (Bernard, Eugene, Edwin, Charles, Alfred, Harvey). Short (one vowel each), common, English versus longer (two vowels each) French/"Posh" English names. Correlation between the names and background/educative level seems likely? Songwriter is interesting too: 4 out of 5 end with a va…
It's also possible that football coaches have a tendency to commonize their names - whether to fit in and make their players more relaxed, or maybe they were just raised in solid blue-collar American families. Their birth certificates could very well read Daniel, William, Michael, James, Richard, Steven. Similarly, the EE's probably have a tendency to be more formal on their resumes or business cards. Their family an…
I work with a software engineer named Charles and a project manager named Eugene. They go by Chuck and Gene, respectively.
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#66Its interesting to see the difference in type of names between Football Coach (Dan, Bill, Mike, Jim, Rich, Steve) and Electrical Engineer (Bernard, Eugene, Edwin, Charles, Alfred, Harvey). Short (one vowel each), common, English versus longer (two vowels each) French/"Posh" English names. Correlation between the names and background/educative level seems likely? Songwriter is interesting too: 4 out of 5 end with a va…
As another commentator points out, (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881131 )the actual results appear to be a heavily human-edited "6 of the top 37" list. In which case most of the interesting patterns would reflect the biases of the people that compiled the chart.
Chances are that there are largely unsurprising gender/age/class/race biases in the full dataset too, but these have been selected for effect (I bet most of the rest of the disproportionately common football coach names are pretty regular names for men born between 30 and 55 years ago with some of them possibly even having additional syllables, and similarly and wouldn't be surprised to find that Jim and Bill, for example, also featured high in the list of people disproportionately likely to be electrical engineers, possibly even above Eugene)
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#67 I visited a fire station in the country in my province a few years ago and on the wall were names of the volunteers.
Nearly every one was John Gallant, the surname is very common and it's a small community.
The funny thing is the surname is so common people have nicknames such as John 'Rabbit' Gallant but that name becomes so well-known his son will be called Rabbit Jr.
So the plaque is full of a wild mix of actual surnames and given names and of course nicknames but also the junior of the nicknamed people.
Add to that one family has seven daughters all named Mary.
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#68Some time ago, I saw a paper when some scientists find that people often tends to have place of live and job which is somehow connected with their names eg. there's more Denises who works as dentists or Louises in Louisiane. I also noticed that in my country (Poland) there's quite more people working in IT with names or surnames which begins on K (Polish word for computer is "komputer"), I'm the case.
> I also noticed that in my country (Poland) there's quite more people working in IT with names or surnames which begins on K (Polish word for computer is "komputer") You don't say... :) Perhaps because names starting with K are simply very common in Poland? ;) 1 in 6 out of 100 most popular last names starts with K. And quite more IT employees than whom exactly? Presidents of the country? Since 1989 Poland had: Jaru…
Okay, maybe you're right and I'm just biased with serial killer who killed few software developers with K-name living in Kraków
Polish article: http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/1,114873,9855837,Krak...
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#69I visited a fire station in the country in my province a few years ago and on the wall were names of the volunteers. Nearly every one was John Gallant, the surname is very common and it's a small community. The funny thing is the surname is so common people have nicknames such as John 'Rabbit' Gallant but that name becomes so well-known his son will be called Rabbit Jr. So the plaque is full of a wild mix of actual s…
PEI?
Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession
#70Rabbi - Chaim, Shlomo, Judah, Meir, Yosef, Moshe
Seems sort of ... logical.