Autism Spectrum and Rare Last Names

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I have a very rare last name for the US because it's Eastern European.

dad:
#60329 most common last name
0.0005% of last names in the US
Around 1250 people

mom:
#2135 most common last name
0.006% of last names in the US
Around 15000 people

Maternal Grandmother maiden name:
#33664 most common last name
0.0005% of last names in the US
Around 1250 people

Paternal Grandmother maiden name:
#6191 most common last name
0.002% of last names in the US
Around 5000 people

(I just have absolutely no clue how to translate this information to answer the poll question)

My first name is the 2nd most common according to the statistics (John, János originally). My middle name (Oliver) is #319. My last name is fairly common where I live, but in the states it's only the #22764 (0.0005%, 1250 people).

'Cause it's Polish. In its more common form (Zabriskie) it is the #19350, so it's more common than mine.

My last name is quite a common last name. And my mum's maiden name is common too.

#2894

This

aghogday, this is an interesting idea, but hate to break it to you. There's a mathematical flaw in your reasoning.

It's already statistically more likely to have a rare name than it is to have a common one just by virtue of the fact that there are far more people with uncommon names than with common ones.

It took me a while to break this down, but here's some examples:

Smith is the single most common name in the U.S. You are 99% more likely NOT to be named Smith.

You are also:

94% more likely to not have a name in the top 10.

86% more likely to not have a name in the top 50.

81% more likely to not have a name in the top 100.

The likelihood of having the next most popular name (101) is .083%, and the likelihood of having any single name goes down from there, but the likelihood of having ANY ONE of the names from 101 and below is 81%. Far higher than the 29% likelihood of being within the top 100 names.

If you look at the overall picture, it will always be more likely to have a rare name than a popular one, simply because not enough people HAVE popular names to begin with.

And that's all totally independent of Autism.

Like I said, it's an interesting idea, but statistically it doesn't prove or even indicate anything at all.

Sorry man.

EDIT: Here's the sight I used for the stats: http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm

From that I broke it down in Excel to get the numbers above.

My last name isn't that rare, so it's the first choice in the poll.

My last name is in the top 100, but the last name/gene link is suspect. 145 years ago when Lincoln freed the slaves, many of the freedmen simply took on the last name of their former owners. While my last name is in the top 100, I suspect that over half of the people with my last name are not even the same race as I am.

Ah. Yes, I got the name Jory from Ubik, but I thought you were referring to my real last name. I forgot that they even mentioned Jory's last name in the book.

Ok, you said there is a higher rate of DX and that's what I meant.

Also, Afro-Carribeans are Island people, of course they have a high rate because they have been passing the same genes round for hundreds of years, on an island. They have created limited genetic variance and it's not that you would never see autism in African individuals in the first place, it's just that it's very rare.

One could also say that those Somali immigrants were more likely to breed with each other as opposed to the general population in Sweden and the UK as well, again, creating limited genetic variance. Not to mention that they from the same part of the world to begin with.

Like I said, I'm not saying it never occurs outside of the Caucasian race but it (was) rare and still is by comparison, although it makes sense that the genes would spread quickly and the rates of diagnosed and undiagnosed autistics would rise.

I never claimed to be a scholar if any of this isn't supported by research LOL.

Well, that site wouldn't give me statistics, just said it was very rare, so I tried another, and it said...

So I guess my name is pretty damned rare. I won't give out my last name on here, but it's a Polish spelling of верный.

My last name is very rare in the United States because it's Russian.

However, in Russia, my last name is one of the most common ones.

I don't think Asperger's has anything to do with last names, though, and vice-versa.

The link said only 1250 people in the US have the same surname as I. that is 0.0005% so it could be a little rare.

is the #10165 most common last name
0.001% of last names in the US are.
Around 2500 people have as a last name!

Depends on what one's definition of rare is.

You used a website for the most common surnames, which included only 5,000 surnames. The website I am using includes over 88,000 names.

There is actually over 150,000 unique surnames recorded in the US Census, ranging from 195 each at over 88,000 down to 101 each at the 150,000 level.

The US Census hasn't released numbers on the remaining 60,000,000, individuals and won't until the year 2070, so there could be anywhere from 600,000 to 60,000,000 additional individuals with unique names. If it is 60,000,000 one could expect a random poll to generate about 20% rare names. If it is 30,000,000, one would expect about 10% rare names (less than 200, names identified per name).

8 out of 39 respondents from the US, reported a very rare result, with no available statistical data from a data base of over 88,000 surnames. If one assumes the top number provided by the US census at 200 identical surnames each, it's 8 people that responded in one poll that have names that 1 out of about 1.5 million people have, in the US.

There is nothing about this poll that is scientific. In fact, it would have been better if I had used percentages rather than fractions, because many people had problems translating the percentages into fractions, which I myself made a mistake on.

Because of that confusion, not much of interest from the poll to be gained except for the reports of very rare. Math errors aren't possible for that result.

One would have to probably design a better poll, do it here again, and go to several similiar sites, not associated with autism, to get any real idea if results here are unusual. It is completely uncharted territory, as far as I know.

The best way to do it, would probably be to use the site below, just poll the rank of the surname and derive results from that data.

If anyone is curious that got a rare result from the website I provided. This linked site below provides data from the US census from 2000, of all the names identified and made public, of 150K unique surnames, going down to 101 names per surname.

http://www.americanlastnames.us/index.html

Last edited by aghogday on 12 Dec 2011, 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.