Precommodified last names + nominative determinism

X thread on papers by people with the same last names

An abundance of Katherines paper

A Few Goodmen paper

from Venkatesh Rao's Blyg ↗ · snapshot of v2

The game theory applying to baby naming is so real. The first time you meet another kid with the same name as the one you picked, you feel like you didn't think hard enough.

You have to pick a name that no one else in your cohort will pick but they won't reject either.

Baby names should be different but not weird. Additional pressure when you're an immigrant is that the name be easy to say for the locals.