On the usefulness of "common" names.

Realistically, there’ll be hardly any of this anonymity by the time all of today’s babies are on the internet (well, if their parents are responsible that is) that it’s practically moot. If things keep developing as rapidly as they have in the past ~20/30 years, even people with the most basic names will be found quickly and easily.

And for the most part, only people with exceptionally weird names are gonna be the only ones on the entire internet with their name.* If your last name is Jones, you’re gonna have quite the time picking a first name nobody else with your last name has. But if your last name is, say, Hugelmaier, you may very well end up being the only one, even with a pretty tame first name.

*this may not be completely true currently, but in 20 years? Absolutely.

/r/namenerds Thread Parent