Because according to this website, a number of them do not exist in the United States. Either I have an incredibly active imagination, or that website is wack.
(Also, they say there are two people in the U.S. with my name, which I actually find hard to believe. I truly think I'm the only person in the whole world with my name.)
Edited to add: I also have a number of family members who do not exist, as well as some friends from graduate school. Common denominator in all of these cases? The names tend to be more "ethnic" than not. Perhaps people of various ethnicities just don't exist?
12 years ago
17 comments:
Hmm... While there are 4 people with my name (it says in the U.S., not the world), I can't possibly exist, since neither my mom nor dad does.
my maiden name doesn't exist.
My husband doesn't exist.
There are, apparently, two of me, which is consistent with my Googling of myself--there's a high schooler in New Jersey who has my name.
But, as you know, I have a common-for-its-ethnic-group last name (and an uncommon but now kinda trendy first name from a very different ethnic group), so this makes sense. I expect there to be more of us in the years to come.
I don't exist (neither my RL name nor my blog alias). And 97% of people with my real first name are male (I'm not). No wonder I have problems convincing people it is a gender-neutral name.
Yeah, my ex-boyfriend doesn't exist either. I clicked on the "what does this mean" and they explained that since it's a statistical application based on (incomplete) census data, about 19% of people will find that one or both of their names don't exist. So yeah, that website is wack.
From what I read over there, it's not actually finding how many people with a given name, but rather stating the statistical liklihood of a given name.
Whack!
Clearly you have highly selective taste, Dr. Crazy -- you date statistically improbable men! :)
My last girlfriend doen't exist. In fact, no one with her first name exists.
I think you nailed it with your "ethnic" suggestion. According to this website, no one with my mother's maiden name exists--and she comes from a LARGE Polish-American family: she's one of 6, her dad's one of 11, and she has a million cousins.
One of my exes also doesn't exist, and neither does his wife, who has a different last name. (But in those two cases, the world might really be a better place if the website were right!)
I DO date statistically improbable men. This is true :)
An update: No one with my mother's maiden name exists (she is one of ten children) according to the program; and many people in my step-dad's HUGE Lebanese family don't exist. (This is especially hilarious because in that family, there are a number of people with identical first and last names.) In terms of the ex-factor, I've got representatives from Finnish, Polish, Czech, Italian (though the Italian sirname is actually a misspelling - should end with an "o" but ends with an "i" instead - and Slovak backgrounds, all of whose last names do not exist. It seems to me that the whole "statistical probability" thing only works if one is not a person with a name that's been absorbed into the melting pot, if that makes sense.
One thing that makes this most interesting to me is that I hadn't realized the regularity with which I've dated people over lo these past 16 years who come from quite "ethnic" families and who still strongly identify as part of that ethnic group. Hmmm. Maybe I do have a type after all?
(Oh, and one last thing: What's most funny to me is that the fact that my real life sirname exists, as it's a made-up sirname based on a real one. The side of the family from which that name comes is 100% polish, complete with about 14 consonants in a row. For ease of getting through the world, they edited it down a few generations back to resemble a quite common German name - but they did not spell it in the quite common German way(s). Huh.)
Well, as far as I know we never dated but I do not exist. My last name ends in a vowel, so that "ethnic sounding name" issue is applicable to me, too.
I don't *think* we ever dated, but since you technically don't exist - at least statistically - apparently you would fit into my pool of prospective datable people :)
I don't exist! Does this mean I don't have to pay taxes and can run around naked?
A former boyfriends (Antonio Bandeiras) was an ilegal alien. does he count, or he an unperson?
Why were you checking up men you'd slept with may I ask? You have not the time! ;)
I don't exist either :(
(or I guess I really need a smiley face because that means I'm original!)
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