In the true spirit of procrastination, I’ve gone through the rosters of all 38 varsity sports teams, mining data on the most important piece of information you can know about anybody: first names. But before I tell you what I’ve found, why don’t you guess?
Let’s be real – it’s reading period, so we know you’ve been on Sporcle for the past couple days anyway. Take five minutes (or less, if you’re good) to try our official Princeton Athlete Names quiz, and then check out more details and pretty word clouds after the jump.
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First, some basic demographics:
-According to the rosters on GoPrincetonTigers.com, there are currently 971 varsity athletes at Princeton, around 18-19% of the student body.
-Of these 971 student-athletes, 602 are men and 369 are women. This difference is explained by three factors: there are two more men’s teams than women’s teams; men’s teams tend to have more players than comparable women’s teams (for example: baseball vs. softball; men’s vs. women’s lacrosse); and the football team, which accounts for nearly half that difference alone.
On to the names. A total of 238 athletes had unique names – 125 guys and 113 gals. These ranged from monikers as common as Josh and Leah to less familiar names like Jaiye and Diamond. A surprisingly annoying part of this project was categorizing variations on the same name – for example, Katherine also includes Catherine, Cathryn, Cathy, Kathryn, Kathy, Kate and Katie.
The most popular name is … Michael, by a wide margin. This shouldn’t come as a large surprise, as Michael was the most common boys’ baby name in America every year from 1989-93, the birth years of most undergraduates. 32 Princeton athletes go by the name, including senior defensive lineman Mike Catapano, who won the top program award at the team’s banquet, and defenseman Michael Sdao, a junior assistant captain on the men’s hockey team who is featured in our Wednesday issue.
Alex is tied for second because of its versatility: it doesn’t crack the top four for either gender alone, but 13 men and eight women share the name. That total of 21 is matched by the aforementioned Katherine family, easily the top women’s name.
Robert (including Rob and Bobby) is second among men at 18, followed closely by Thomas at 17. According to Wikipedia, John (11) and Jonathan (9) actually are not related names; combined, they would be second among men, but individually, neither cracks the top 10.
While 15 different male names are in double digits, only three female names crack the same barrier – largely, of course, because there are more male athletes, but also because girls’ names tend to vary more. Sarah (12) and Rachel (10) are next on the female list, with Emily following at nine.
The two most common girls’ baby names of the early ‘90s, Jessica and Ashley, are notably absent. In fact, only three current Princeton athletes share each name, on the same level as Cecilia and Theresa. On the guys’ side, I was a little surprised by the popularity of Alec (5), while Josh, a top-four baby name every year from 1989-93, is represented only once.
I’ll leave you with some pretty word clouds, courtesy of Wordle, showing the distribution of athlete names:
If you haven’t heard already, there’s another 
