Presidential Last Names: Frequency of Appearance
- By Bruce McKinney
Is Washington the most frequently referenced name in the AED?
If you ask someone familiar with American history to rank by frequency of references in the Americana Exchange Database the last names of the Presidents you create an interesting challenge. Many, even most, are important and if importance is the crucial factor we can all write up a list beginning with most important at the top. If there are other factors, and there are, the list will be a bit more complicated to correctly sequence.
Here are some of those factors. Of the 44 US Presidents six have the same last name so our list of Presidential last names will be 38 rather than 44 and six of them will have a double weight. They are:
Adams
Harrison
Johnson
Cleveland
Roosevelt
Bush
Years of exposure are also important. Obama recently had 419 references, the lowest number of any President. He’s also the newest President. If the number of references is exclusively a function of elapsed time then the older Presidential last names will always have the most references. This however is not the case.
Importance is another factor. There is a small group of ultra-important Presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and the Roosevelts whose material excites more interest in the auction rooms and more admiration among historians. This too needs to be factored in.
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Presidential Last Names: Frequency of Appearance
- By Bruce McKinney
Is Lincoln the most frequently referenced name in the AED?
Let’s also not ignore whether these men served one or two terms. Here are the one term Presidents:
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
Martin Van Buren
James K. Polk
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Rutherford B. Hayes
William Howard Taft
Herbert Hoover
Jimmy Carter
George H. W. Bush
Do they get half credit?
Others died in office. You may wish to apportion their frequency of appearance accordingly. Here is a list of days served.
William Henry Harrison 31 days
Zachary Taylor 491 days
Abraham Lincoln 1,503 days
James A. Garfield 199 days
William McKinley 1,654 days
Warren G. Harding 881 days
Franklin Roosevelt 4,422 days
John F. Kennedy 1,036 days
The number of days is probably an important factor.
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Presidential Last Names: Frequency of Appearance
- By Bruce McKinney
Is Kennedy the most common presidential last name in the AED?
Collectability is another consideration. To consistently show up in a database of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera material related to a President has to be desirable enough to make it into the auction rooms, dealer catalogues or bibliographies.
There is also the issue of the name being used for another purpose. George lent his name to Washington, D.C. If you believe the number of references to Washington D.C. are substantial that will raise George a few notches on the list. He gets credit for every record that includes Washington anywhere in it. Therefore thank you Washington Irving. Grover Cleveland likewise benefits from all things Cleveland, the place, even the pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander. James Garfield in the same way benefits from Garfield the Cat.
And there is one more factor, the commonness of the name. Harrison may have been in office for only 31 days but if Harrison is a common name there may be enough other references to Harrison, such as Harrison, New York and Rex Harrison, in the AED to carry him to the heights of Washington. Then again, maybe not.
Anyway I hope I am confusing you. I want to show you the factors while only pretending to help you create your lists. That is now your job and I calculate the probability that you’ll sequence all thirty-eight presidential last names in the correct order at zero.
Before sending you off into oblivion I’ll provide a little guidance. The AE Database from which these references have been gathered contained, as of April 23rd, 2011 3,203,418 records of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera that have appeared at auction, been listed in important dealer catalogues or described in bibliographies. Among these records there are 1,124,926 references to these 38 names or an average of 29,603 per name. Eight of these names have more than 29,603 references, 30 have less.
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Presidential Last Names: Frequency of Appearance
- By Bruce McKinney
Is Johnson the most common presidential name in the AED?
See if you can put them in the correct order. Results are on page 5.
1. Washington
2. Adams
3. Jefferson
4. Madison
5. Monroe
6. Jackson
7. Van Buren
8. Harrison
9. Tyler
10. Polk
11. Taylor
12. Fillmore
13. Pierce
14. Buchanan
15. Lincoln
16. Johnson
17. Grant
18. Hayes
19. Garfield
20. Arthur
21. Cleveland
22. McKinley
23. Roosevelt
24. Taft
25. Wilson
26. Harding
27. Coolidge
28. Hoover
29. Truman
30. Eisenhower
31. Kennedy
32. Nixon
33. Ford
34. Carter
35. Reagan
36. Bush
37. Clinton
38. Obama
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Presidential Last Names: Frequency of Appearance
- By Bruce McKinney
The answers:
1. Wilson 330,252
2. Carter 233,607
3. Washington 87,591
4. Arthur 67,740
5. Johnson 65,862
6. Adams 49,606
7. Lincoln 32,480
8. Taylor 30,563
9. Grant 27,664
10. Madison 25,596
11. Jefferson 20,975
12. Jackson 20,688
13. Ford 19,116
14. Harrison 14,916
15. Roosevelt 10,276
16. Cleveland 8,694
17. Kennedy 8,082
18. Monroe 7,417
19. Hayes 6,991
20. Buchanan 6,262
21. Nixon 5,876
22. Clinton 5,634
23. Pierce 5,530
24. Tyler 5,456
25. Harding 4,174
26. Eisenhower 3,767
27. Van Buren 3,419
28. Hoover 2,796
29. Bush 2,231
30. Truman 2,211
31. Garfield 1,763
32. Taft 1,643
33. Polk 1,457
34. McKinley 1,335
35. Coolidge 1,200
36. Fillmore 998
37. Reagan 629
38. Obama 429
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