The folks at the baby-name app Nametrix crunched some data and found that certain names are disproportionately represented in different professions. The name Leonard, for example, happens to be particularly common among geologists, and Marthas are overrepresented among interior designers. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Popular Names by Profession”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
If you have a baby on the way and you’re searching for a name, well, there’s an app for that. It’s by a company called NameTrix.
And they’ve done some interesting research, Grant, where they crunched some data and they found that for any given profession, certain names tend to crop up more often than in the general population.
Like, for example, geologists tend to have more Lenards. Lenards. Isn’t that weird?
So they’ll still have a lot of Johns and Mikes, but Leonard’s are far more represented in that field than they should be statistically.
Yes.
And it doesn’t mean that if you name your baby Leonard, he’s going to grow up to be a geologist.
Right.
They also found that surgeons tend to have an unusually high number of Hollies, women named Holly. Isn’t that odd?
And I don’t know what to make of that. It’s really interesting, right?
I mean, this touches on the topic of nominative determinism, which is if you did name your son Stone Quarry, maybe he would become a geologist, right?
And when you find the weather people whose name is Windy Hills or something, and she was a meteorologist.
So nominative determinism is when your name somehow seems to be the thing driving you toward a profession.
It’s really strange, isn’t it?
It is strange.
I was looking online at the chart that they created based on this data, and it says that Martha tends to be heavily represented among interior designers.
Martha is overrepresented in interior designers.
Yes, and so that makes me a little bit skeptical because if you’ve ever seen where I live.
Never been to the cave, looking forward to it.
The woman cave, the nerd cave.
Well, yeah, this is really interesting.
And, you know, my mother had a doctor. His name was Dr. Payne, Payne with a Y.
I had a doctor hurt. I had a podiatrist named Dr. Hurt.
I love these.
Grant doesn’t pop up on any of these lists, right?
No, I was looking for it.
I think you’re sui generis.
Oh, thank you very much.
Well, we love funny stories about names just kind of accidentally matching professions and what people do for fun.
Give us a call and tell us about them. 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.
