Name your children with the help of Google!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117856222924394753.html

Names are important and help identify people as individuals. However with the easy-access of the Internet, people can type any name into a google search and try to find more information on that person (whether it's an employer, friend, or 'stalker'). You run into problems with being mistaken as someone else if you share the exact name as someone else. So, lets so some employer decides to try to find you on facebook and go on the profile of someone else who has the same name as you and that person has some questionable material that paints the wrong image of you in someone else's eyes.

So now, as this article talks about, when parents are deciding on names for their child, they type them into a google search to see if the name is unique so their child won't have issues with someone confusing his/her identity with someone else. Therefore, these searches are having a big impact in this area. The article also doesn't know how long this trend will last, but it sure is an interesting approach.

There are nearly 7,000,000,000,000 people in the world. Odds are that there are a few others with your name, and some of them are online. You will not find a unique name unless you straight up make up the name out of thin air.

The uniqueness of a name in the vastness of the internet is so far down the priority list that it hardly bears mentioning.

Also, in your example of the potential employer doing google research, it is very unlikely that they wouldn't give the person the benefit of the doubt if they weren't sure they were looking at the actual person. Nobody has ever confused me for a blues musician.

These parents' thinking seems short-sighted at best, since naming your child on the basis of his or her potential "googleability" (as the article says) can only reflect results from RIGHT NOW. It is ridiculous to assume that by the time your child is looking for a job, his google search results will be anything like they are now. The web is growing at such a rate (and is on the verge of changing its form, with the development of the semantic web and adding those additional layers of content to the existing web) that it's impossible for us now to imagine accurately what it will look like 18-22 years from now.

This is especially true for name-googling, since name popularity is so subject to caprice and fads: a name that seems "different" and is just beginning to be trendy now is likely to become common in your child's age group and eventually there will be thousands of other young adults with the same "unique" name as your child, reflecting the oscillation of name trends.

It might be useful for some parents...

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/04/03/singapore-superhero-batman-bin-suparmen/

There is boy named 'Batman Bin Suparman'. I am not sure whether he will be future superhero, maybe journalist... CEO of company...

I agree that basing your child's name off it's googleability is sort of a ridiculous idea. Employers most likely base their hiring off signals that we talked about in class like education and references not facebook profile (though our generation is certainly getting threatened with this these days). Also, I just read the chapter about this in Freakonomics. People with more unusual names are less likely to get hired sometimes because employers make assumptions about their socioeconomic status.

I think that people should take this as a lesson to not give your kids very unusual names, as even though this may lead to them being a higher hit on Google, it will probably hurt them in other ways in the future, as Lauren said. Having a name that googles well is less important that having a good resume.

There are a few other problems as well. Aside from not every name being on Google, suppose the new name makes it onto Google, with the tag "cool, unique name". Suppose another parent-to-be finds this name. They would then comment on it, and endorse it, and maybe even use the name for their own child. If this trend continues, an information cascade could be introduced, popularizing the name, making it lose the unique factor. Also, as an aside, many names are uncommon because they are less conducive to correct pronunciation. Alternatively, if it does not catch on, it still seems shortsighted to avoid common names, because I know that I would be bugged if nobody could ever get my name right. It might even turn off employers to a person. They might think "Well, they seem nice enough, but I will always screw up their unusual name, and it will be awkward, I'll stick with John Doe instead."