Or more specifically, how common is your name?.

People often say to me about the last name Shirley, “boy, that’s not a very common name, is it?”.

I often say, “no, actually it’s fairly common, what’s your last name?” And theirs is often less common. Sure, Smith and Jones, and even Nguyen are more common, but there’s barely 1000 names in the US more common than Shirley, and only 43% of the population have those names, so there are more people with less common names than me, than with more common names.

last name      %      cum %     rank
SMITH          1.006  1.006      1
JOHNSON        0.810  1.816      2
WILLIAMS       0.699  2.515      3
JONES          0.621  3.136      4
BROWN          0.621  3.757      5
DAVIS          0.480  4.237      6
MILLER         0.424  4.660      7
WILSON         0.339  5.000      8
MOORE          0.312  5.312      9
TAYLOR         0.311  5.623     10

    % - percentage of the population with that name
cum % - total of all names above this and this, added