After reading my previous post on baby names, my mom showed me a chapter from her book, Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
Chapter Six: Perfect Parenting, Part II; or: Would a Roshanda by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?
This chapter talks about the statistics of people's names.
One story given is about a NYC man named Robert Lane. After having several children, all with normal names, he and his wife had another child, a son, that he named Winner. Three years later, he had a seventh child and named him Loser. While Loser went to prep school and college on scholarships to later become a successful sergeant with NYPD (his mother's dream), Winner racked up a lengthy criminal record (including arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, etc.).
The chapter goes on to give the statistics of the most common baby names according to the parents' race, social and economic status, as well as education levels.
Some examples showed how the different spellings of the same name often reflected specific characteristics of the parents. Here is an example for the mother's education level:
Ten "Jasmines" in Ascending Order of Maternal Education
(Years of mother's education in parenthesis)
1. Jazmine (11.94)
2. Jazmyne (12.08)
3. Jazzmin (12.14)
4. Jazzmine (12.16)
5. Jasmyne (12.18)
6. Jasmina (12.50)
7. Jazmyn (12.77)
8. Jasmine (12.88)
9. Jasmin (13.12)
10. Jasmyn (13.23)
There were some much neater (and entertaining statistics) listed, but my mother insisted that I refrain from posting any of the less-than-p.c. stats (even if this blog only has about 12 readers). :)
(Years of mother's education in parenthesis)
1. Jazmine (11.94)
2. Jazmyne (12.08)
3. Jazzmin (12.14)
4. Jazzmine (12.16)
5. Jasmyne (12.18)
6. Jasmina (12.50)
7. Jazmyn (12.77)
8. Jasmine (12.88)
9. Jasmin (13.12)
10. Jasmyn (13.23)
There were some much neater (and entertaining statistics) listed, but my mother insisted that I refrain from posting any of the less-than-p.c. stats (even if this blog only has about 12 readers). :)
4 comments:
Dear Rebecca -
Lynne and I enjoyed this book when we read it several years ago.
The authors have a blog: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/
Cordially,
Charlie
Wade and I will randomly start mentioning names and responding to how they sound.
"How about Sayid?"
"Wow, that's a great name," for example.
The other day he said a particular girl's name (which I won't mention aloud), and I said, "Umm... it sounds like an unintelligent person would be named that."
We argued about it for a minute, but lo and behold, the next day we saw that name at the top of two lists in "Freakonomics." One was titled "Names of Uneducated People" and the other had something to do with low income.
I love it when I'm right.
Big A was just reading this chapter while we were on our plane ride back from DC. They've got some RANDOM names they consider to be popular.
Wow! I didn't realize that this book was so popular. I'll have to make sure I can get a chance to read more of it!
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