So you think you're special? Actually you probably do—and that feeling, shared by others, may be why people think their own first names are less usual than others do. (click below to read more)
In a paper, a psychologist reports finding such "false uniqueness effects" when college students were asked to rate how common their first name was on a 100-point scale. Members of a gender-matched control group were asked to provide a similar ranking for the same first names. As a reference, all the students were given a list of names from campus enrollment and an approximate indication of their frequency. This provided a rule of thumb. People rated their own names as significantly less common than others did.
A second study covered in the same paper found that students strongly preferred relatively uncommon first names. That may help explain why the subjects may have been biased toward considering their own names more unusual than others did.
"What's in a Name? Our False Uniqueness," John W. Kulig, British Journal of Social Psychology (October)
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