[matthewmcg]

Author listing: Katy Blumer, Kate Donahue, Katie Fritz, Kate Ivanovich, Katherine Lee, Katie Luo, Cathy Meng, Katie Van Koevering

For people unfamiliar with common English names, all of the authors have first names similar to or derived from Katherine.

[dabiged]

The best bit: They recursively reference the paper to provide proof that too many parents choose the same common names:

> For instance, a parent might anticipate the name “Kate” would be a pleasantly traditional yet unique name with only moderate popularity. They would be wrong [6].

Reference 6 is the paper.

[martypitt]

Also good...

> Simon Shindler contributed significantly to the aesthetic of Figure 7, but could not be named an author for obvious reasons.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Simon Shindler contributed significantly to the aesthetic of Figure 7, but could not be named an author for obvious reasons.

What are these "obvious reasons"?

[Mordisquitos]

The reason was that his first name doesn't satisfy the regex

    /^[KC]at(h?ie|e|h?y|h?erine)$/

[adolph]

While that does work for the people listed as author, it does miss Katherine derivative “Kay.”

[jsjohnst]

/^[KC]a(t(h?ie|e|h?y|h?erine)?|y)?$/

[jsjohnst]

Their first name isn’t derived from Katherine. ;)

[byteknight]

Kay is derived from Kate. Kate is Derived from Kathy or Katherine.

[jvanderbot]

Nicknames satisfy the transitive property.

[devsda]

It goes beyond that. Three of the authors have east-asian last names.

I understand that many people from east asia have a given name in their native language and an english sounding name that they often choose themselves.

If those three authors did chose their english names, then they too fall into the same category of parents who chose a variation of Katherine.

[well_actulily]

This phenomena also occurs in the transgender community; people put a lot of thought and intention choosing their new names only to wind up surrounded by other people who also landed on the same name, often for similar reasons. There's even a whole subreddit specifically for transfeminine people who are named some variation of Lily: https://www.reddit.com/r/LilyIsTrans/

[alickz]

at least they're not a https://old.reddit.com/r/tragedeigh/

[madcaptenor]

Are all the trans men still naming themselves Aidan?

[yamazakiwi]

Recently I've met more Ashe's than Aidan's

[bee_rider]

If they did indeed pick those names while traveling to the US, possibly as adults, I think they’d actually really interesting cases. They’d be choosing names later than their peers, so they could see how the name game played out for their peers. Of course, they could also be peers of the parents of the other authors.

I’ve also met some folks who had English names that phonetically sounded similar to their original names. I wonder if there’s an east Asian first name that sounds like any of the versions of Katherine.

[burnished]

From my anecdotal experience origin is a big factor: of adults I have known to choose a name for themselves americans overwhelmingly pick unusual or ornamented names, whereas the other group (typically asian, first language has a different set of basic sounds) pick stereotypically common and plain/short names. I don't really know anyones specific thought process on the matter though, maybe I'll have to start asking for curiosities sake.

[nucleardog]

Anecdotal, of course, but the goal can be quite different for both groups.

English people choosing English baby names often want them to be relatively unique or stand out in some way. At the very least, they don't want them to be _overly_ common.

Manny people I've talked to that have chosen a name after immigrating are kind of aiming for the opposite. They want to fit in. They already feel that they stand out, and generally try and minimize that.

There's also the fact that for some groups, they're choosing the name at a time when they may not be very familiar with English names or culture, and may not have much in the way of local resources they can or feel comfortable with drawing on, so the main indication they have that they haven't chosen some absurd name is "hey, lots of people here are named that".

[DowagerDave]

Not sure it's still the same scenario with today's far more connected world, but even 20 years ago you could guess with some accuracy that someone was east-Asian from their "English" name being ~50 years out of date, popularity wise.

[schmidtleonard]

I hope they did not perish immediately after choosing their names, as assumed in the paper.

[srndsnd]

The title of the paper is also a reference to the famous YA novel "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green.

[evanb]

See also:

A Few Goodmen: Surname-Sharing Economist Authors, by Goodman, Goodman, Goodman, and Goodman https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/joshuagoodman/files/goodma...

(Para)bosons, (para)fermions, quons and other beasts in the menagerie of particle statistics, by O.W. Greenberg, D.M Greenberger, T.V. Greenbergest https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9306225 [Wally Greenberg told me that T.V. stands for 'the very']

Also note that TFA is a 1 April posting.

[bonzini]

It's SIGBOVIK, so that's the kind of content you'd expect independent of the date.

[ale42]

Actual research paper about the influence of a name on career and other "major life decisions":

• Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11999918/)

With follow-ups:

• I sell seashells by the seashore and my name is Jack: comment on Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones (2002) (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14599244/)

• Assessing the validity of implicit egotism: a reply to Gallucci (2003) (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14599245/)

[gattr]

On a related note:

C. Limb, R. Limb, C. Limb, D. Limb "Nominative determinism in hospital medicine: Can our surnames influence our choice of career, and even specialty?"

https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1308/147363515X14...

[HeyLaughingBoy]

This reminds me that I went to nautical school with someone whose last name was Schiff (German for ship) and he said that was exactly the reason he chose to go to sea. Also remember someone a year ahead of us whose name was Dory (a small rowboat).

[dbcurtis]

In the small rural county where I grew up, the 1/2-time job of county prosecuting attorney was named Lynch. I am not making this up.

[xhkkffbf]

I personally know a "Doctor Coffin" (coughing & coffin) as well as a Doctor Payne.

[slyall]

A few years ago there was KatieConf. Intended to highlight the lack of Women speakers at tech conferences

https://2019.katieconf.xyz/

[stordoff]

I'm reminded of the 'Tom Formal' that took place whilst I was at university:

> Last night, February 3rd 2011, saw 100 students and fellows all sharing the name of Tom, gather together in a record-breaking charity event in Sidney Sussex dining hall. [...] For £20, Cambridge students with the name "Tom, Thomas, Tommy (or another legitimate variation)" were able to attend a black-tie, three-course formal dinner

https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/3192

[drewry]

Hah this reminds me of a site I built for April 1, 2019 http://www.mynamecon.com

[mbg721]

I saw an ad once for a convention of Bobs, with a keynote speech from Bob Newhart and the Jamaican bobsled team as special guests.

[Modified3019]

I began wondering if “Katerina” (often shortened to “Kat”) was related, the etymology I found here https://www.behindthename.com/name/katherine is interesting.

[mikepurvis]

I expect for a lot of parents naming a baby, the actual etymology is less important than whether the name sounds related/derived.

[AceyMan]

This is the catch: you're not naming a baby: you're naming a person; they just so happen to be a baby at the beginning when you're enjoying an early appreciation for the mel lif lu ous ness of the name ... but they're going to be an adult the vast majority of their life. Ergo, that ought to be the usage parents plan for, rather than some cute, endearing name "fitting" for an infant (for some definition of fitting).

[mikepurvis]

In most cases where babies get a "cutesy" name, hopefully the parents have the self-awareness to give them the corresponding adult version as their legal name, or at least a reasonable alternative as a middle name— both give the person easier options if they want to change it up during life transitions like entering high school or going away to university.

For example, Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter is Apple Blythe Alison Martin, and she's stuck with it, being Apple Martin professionally— but it's good she had the off-ramp to be the much more conventional Blythe or Alison if she'd wanted it.

[AceyMan]

I'm talking about 'in vogue' names like Kayley and Riley and Jaden. Do you see the CEO of Big Corp or Fields Medal winner being a _______?

(btw, my son attended the same preschool as Paltrow's kids: just a coincidence worth mentioning.)

[mikepurvis]

I think in the case of female names there’s so much cyclic effect to it that it’s really hard to say. I could just as easily imagine a few decades ago people saying the same thing about Melissa, Jessica, Amanda, Jennifer, Lauren, Ashley, and all the other names that were super trendy for millennial girls.

Now Ashley is 35 and pushing little Kaylee in the pram, or maybe she’s a business executive — either way, our perception has shifted that “Ashley” is now a woman not a girl. Just like how Gertrude, Beatrice, and Florence are more likely to be playing dolls at the park than bridge at the nursing home.

[xyst]

Glad to know I am not the only person to notice this :)

I wonder how all of these people met and decided to collaborate on this paper.

[gerdesj]

"we create a model which is not only tractable and clean, but also perfectly captures the real world. We then extend our investigation with numerical experiments, as well as analysis of large language model tools."

ie ... this is bollocks.

[ukuina]

I think that is the meta-joke.

[adolph]

Is it paradoxical that family names (used by a group of people) are more differentiated than personal names (used by one person)?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I'd assume that this is more likely true in countries mostly populated by recent immigrants.

[Khoth]

Whether family names are more differentiated depends on where you live.

The USA has a wide variety, but there are also places like Vietnam where only a handful of family names are in common use and more than 30% of people are Nguyens.

[burnished]

I think that makes sense both from an organizational and cultural perspective. Context usually supplies whatever information is needed for personal names so less disambiguation is required, and they are used much more so some simplicity is useful/natural consequence of human nature. Family names are used less frequently and with less context and frankly is how people distinguish their group from others. So yeah, think it checks out.