alanc @ sun.com

Alan Coopersmith’s blog

Random thoughts of a disorganized mind...
(and though it should be obvious, while Sun pays me to think about things, they disclaim any responsibility for these thoughts, nor do I claim what I say matches in any way what Sun thinks)

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http://blogs.sun.com/alanc/date/20061030 Monday October 30, 2006

Unique?


HowManyOfMe.com
LogoThere is:
1
person with my name
in the U.S.A.
How many have your name?

This site claims that my name is unique in the United States, at least based on their interpretation of Census Department statistics, though I've been asked before in blog comments if I'm “the Alan Coopersmith that co-authored Quadpan with Guppy while at Lockheed in the 80s? A Brown math PhD?” (No, I'm not - I was in grade school and high school in the 80's and have only a Bachelor's degree from Berkeley.)

Google mainly finds just me, though it did turn up an “Allan Coopersmith” who was issued a patent for a dental invention.

The other statistics offered me about my name:

  • There are 305,968 people in the U.S. with the first name Alan.
  • Statistically the 204th most popular first name. (tied with 2 other first names)
  • More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Alan are male.
  • There are 1,050 people in the U.S. with the last name Coopersmith.
  • Statistically the 25874th most popular last name. (tied with 1020 other last names)

Somehow the gender breakdown doesn't surprise me, though I've been seeing female variants like “Alana” pop up more and more on TV shows and such lately.

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Posted at 11:18PM Oct 30, 2006 by Alan Coopersmith in General  |  Comments[4]

Comments:

If you think you have it bad, the site claims there is *zero* person with *my* name in the US, even though I have been living in San Francisco since 2000...

Posted by Fazal Majid on October 31, 2006 at 12:08 AM PST #

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A.
No hits on either first or last name. It is nice to be unique ;)

Posted by Mads on October 31, 2006 at 03:34 AM PST #

Alas, I'm a non-entity as well. Apparently nobody with my name lives in the US and I was born here 58 years ago. The main problem is that according to the site nobody has my first name. If I use my nickname (Randy) I can get the count up to two. They apparently don't have a list of names, they have the frequency of first and last names (apparently with rare names removed) and compute a count statistically. Their FAQ claims that they lack 10% of the first names and 10% of the last names, so 19% of us will be considered non-entities. In my case, I have both a rare first name and a rare last name. Even if they had all of the names, the computation might put the count at a fraction of a person anyway. By the way, you'll find more that one Alan Coopersmith if you use the phone book (www.whitepages.com) and you'll find that I exist too - which I find gratifying.

Posted by Rand Huntzinger on October 31, 2006 at 05:14 AM PST #

It finds 0 of me as well. But I do exist! I think, therefore I am! Of course, Google finds me pretty darn quickly.

Posted by Garrett D'Amore on October 31, 2006 at 09:37 AM PST #

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