Vonda McIntyre reference in STXI?

[Deranged Nasat]

Unless it's a case where a common name is highly probable to occur.

Um, isn't that what "common" means?

There's a difference between a name that is simply common and a name that the culture in question has made an active decision to make very common, like Christopher's Vietnamese example or, I guess, the first name "Mohammad" among Muslim cultures. I think he meant that making use of a common name without cause comes across as tacky and lazy, but some names in some cultures cross a line into being so common, and with reason, that the eye-roll reaction no longer applies.

 

[Christopher]

Right. Key word is "highly." A common name is relatively probable to occur, but still it'd have something like a 6% chance of occurring as opposed to a 0.06% chance. "Smith" is a very common name, but how many Smiths have you met in your life? I've only met a few. But if you lived in Vietnam, maybe over half the people you knew would have "Nguyen" in their names. That's highly probable, as opposed to just less improbable than the alternatives.

 

[Stevil2001]

Ah, gotcha and good point.

 

[KRAD]

"Smith" is a very common name, but how many Smiths have you met in your life?

Plenty, actually. I mean, I've met more DeCandidos than Smiths, but that's due to my being related to most of the former.

 

[Christopher]

^But as a percentage of the total number of people you've met in your life, though? If you've met more Smiths than I have, it's probably because you've met more people than I have, since I'm rather shy. I doubt the Smiths make up more than 50% of the people in your acquaintance, or even as many as 10%; therefore it can't really be called probable that any given person in your life will be named Smith.

 

[Rosalind]

for chinese surnames, check out Hundred family names. There are 500 surnames included in this book, currently, there are over 4100 surnames in China. The chinese version of this page also has surnames by population over the ages.

 

[diankra]

Actually I was reminded more of how Dr. Farnsworth's space drive in Futurama works -- the ship stands still and the drive moves the universe around it. I'm sure it's been around in science fiction in many forms for decades

Slightly belatedly: one example is the standing wave FTL drive in some of James Blish's 'young adult' books (The Star Dwellers and Mission to the Heart Stars)