Caroline's Corner: Pick a name, any name?

Caroline's Corner
A couple of years ago, I was inspired to start using personas by a workshop given by Whitney Quesenbery. Since then, I've become more and more enthusiastic about personas, giving me a little problem: how to pick names for them. We generally just offer suggestions in the personas meeting but somehow this always seems a bit awkward.

So I thought I'd look for some suggestions on the Web. First of all, places to find very common names. Chances are that these names are likely to seem familiar to your team but you should be able to pick combinations that avoid any actual person known to the team.

COMMON NAMES IN THE USA
From the 1990 US Census (http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/). I can happily copy them here because US Government publications are not copyrighted.

Most common surnames:
Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown, Davis, Miller, Wilson, Moore, Taylor


Most common female first names:
Mary, Patricia, Linda, Barbara, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Maria, Susan, Margaret, Dorothy

Most common male first names:
James, John, Robert, Michael, William, David, Richard, Charles, Joseph, Thomas

If you want a richer variety, the page I picked up this information from also has downloadable documents with full lists of the entries for surname, first name for females, and first name for males.

The least common surname? Aalderlink. (ranks at 88799th in the list).

COMMON NAMES IN THE UK
There's a not especially usable but fascinating website devoted to the study of British surnames at http://homepages.newnet.co.uk/dance/webpjd/index.htm

Most common male and female first names:

If you go to http://homepages.newnet.co.uk/dance/webpjd/guest/donaldrevised.htm, you will find an article on changes in most common male first names in Britain. I enjoyed reading about the rise and fall of first names since the 13th century (farewell, Alured, Ernulf, Fulk, Hamo, and Imbert – not common then and unknown now).

But the most useful part of the article for me is table 3, listing the most popular first names of the years 1914, 1934, 1944, 1964, 1974 and 1984. That lets me pick a first name that reflects the age of my persona (more or less).

The equivalent article for female names is at http://homepages.newnet.co.uk/dance/webpjd/guest/femfinal.htm.

Most common surnames:
A discussion of most common surnames is hidden away on 'leaders' page: http://freespace.virgin.net/philip.dance1/intro/high.htm.

There's a more convenient source for Scotland at: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/grosweb/grosweb.nsf/pages/surnames. It offers:
Smith, Brown, Wilson, Thomson, Robertson, Campbell, Stewart, Anderson, Macdonald, Scott

I couldn't find a similarly authoritative source for England, Wales or Northern Ireland.

A QUICK ROUTE
http://www.pdom.com/English_last_names_surnames.htm has several lists of common names, including suggestions for Spanish and Indian. It’s a commercial site that is hoping to sell you a domain name for the name you enter, but its level of advertising was not oppressive when I visited. There is nothing to tell us where the information came from but if you are using it just to get suggestions for personas then it doesn't really matter, does it?

FOR INTERNATIONAL SUGGESTIONS
The most diverse list I could find was on the Wikipedia at http://www.fact-index.com/l/li/list_of_most_popular_family_names.html. As a person who enjoys obscure facts, I was delighted to learn that the most common surnames in Bulgaria are Ivanov, Petrov, Georgiev and Dimitrov. Parts of the page mention the sources. Sadly, I don't think that I'll have opportunities to use most of them. Although there's a bit of curiosity value in the name Fulk Dimitrov, it simply won't work for me as a helpful name for a persona.

HOW I PLAN TO USE THE NAMES
I suspect that simply sticking to the most common names might result in some rather bland personas, but I plan to have the lists around the place to use as a primer or to supplement suggestions from the team.

Let me know if you'd use them, and if so how.

If you have any comments or suggestions about this article, then please contact Caroline at:

Caroline.Jarrett@Effortmark.co.uk

Caroline Jarrett
e: caroline.jarrett@effortmark.co.uk
p: +44 (0) 1525 370379

Associated Link: Effortmark

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