Choosing the Name of the Year
| The proprietors of the Name of the Year contest “can’t imagine topping last year’s death struggle between Destiny Frankenstein and Spaceman Africa.” But these are hopeful times. They’ve collected and...
View ArticleWinner, Loser, and Marijuana Pepsi
We wrote in Freakonomics about two brothers named Winner and Loser. Winner became a lifetime criminal; Loser a detective in the NYPD. The story of these two brothers matched the findings of my academic...
View ArticleFun With WolframAlpha
The jury’s still out on whether WolframAlpha.com will turn into a tool that is useful to solve real world computational problems, but it certainly is fun to play with. Here are some cool Easter eggs...
View ArticleFREAK Shots: The George Foremans
George Foreman named all five of his boys after himself, but only one has taken up pro boxing. I met the retired boxer and “grillionaire” at his son’s pro debut last Saturday. George III won, but in a...
View ArticleCall Me Bruce
Women in the legal profession with more masculine-sounding names, like Cameron or Kelly, have better odds of becoming judges than women with feminine names, according to a new study by Bentley Coffey...
View ArticleIs It Time to Start a Strange Name Hall of Fame?
(Photo: Russ Morris) We should probably start a Strange Name Hall of Fame at some point to chronicle all the weird, wonderful, terrible names that readers have passed along to us since we first wrote...
View ArticleBad News for People With Hard-to-Pronounce Names
(Photo: Fady Aziz) If you have one of those names that people are always struggling to pronounce, we have some bad news for you. A new paper (ungated version here) by Simon M. Laham, Peter Koval, and...
View ArticleMike Brown Vs. Mike Brown
The Old Lake County Courthouse in Crown Point, IN. (Photo: Joey Lax-Salinas) Thanks to @PE_Mulroe via Twitter, here’s a story from the (Northwest Indiana) Post-Tribune that combines two of our favorite...
View ArticleAmerican Baby Names Are Somehow Getting Even Worse
This piece on baby names by Drew Magary made me laugh out loud. I sent it to my wife, and she laughed so hard she cried.
View ArticleA Freakonomics Radio Bleg: What’s Your Name?
Want to be part of an episode of Freakonomics Radio? We’re working on a podcast about names and we want to hear from readers and listeners about their own names — common ones, unusual ones, everything...
View ArticleHow Much Does Your Name Matter? A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast
Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast is called “How Much Does Your Name Matter?” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above. You can also read the...
View ArticleAn App for Names
Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast is called “How Much Does Your Name Matter?” A listener named Mark Edmond wrote in to tell us about Nametrix, a names app he created: I’m a new dad who was...
View ArticleDiscriminating Software
The Economist takes a look at the software that big companies are using to sort through job applicants. It finds that people who use Chrome and Firefox browsers are better employees, and people with...
View ArticleMore on the Google AdWords Controversy
A reader named Desmond Lawrence writes from London with further commentary on our “How Much Does Your Name Matter” podcast — specifically, about Harvard computer scientist Latanya Sweeney‘s research...
View ArticleFREAK-est Links
Movie tickets cost as much as $48; “Star Wars” creator George Lucas predicts that ticket prices are only going up. (HT: SM Fishman) Name wars: Borghese Inc. fights the Borghese family for the right to...
View ArticlePrice Discrimination? Racial Discrimination?
From a reader named Philip Mulder comes this photograph: Philip says this is a hair-cutting joint in Washington, D.C. As you can see, it offers a 50% discount if your name is — in this case — Amanda,...
View ArticleHow Much Does Your Name Matter?
Season 4, Episode 2 When Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney Googled her name one day, she noticed something strange: an ad for a background check website came up in the results, with the heading:...
View ArticleWhat’s in an Americanized Name?
(Photo: Marlon E) What’s in a name? Steve Levitt and economists following on his work have examined how racial differences in given names generate (or don’t) differences in economic outcomes. A new...
View ArticleA Baby Name That Really Tells You Something About the Parents
The underlying point of everything we’ve ever written about baby names is that the name is essentially the parents’ signal to the world of what they think of their kid — whether it’s a signal of...
View ArticleHow Much Does Your Name Matter? A Freakonomics Radio Rebroadcast
This week’s podcast is a rebroadcast of our episode called “How Much Does Your Name Matter?” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above. You can also...
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