Picking the name of your newborn baby is one of the biggest decisions you’ll ever have to make in life, but just how much of an impact could your baby’s name have? Could it make them more or less likely to be a winner?
We’ve analysed the first names of thousands of ‘winners’ across the worlds of entertainment and sport, from Academy Award winners to Wimbledon champions to see which are the most common names which could just give your little one the extra chance of being a winner!
So, what’s the most likely name to be a born winner? Well, the answer is apparently ‘John’, which perhaps shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as one of the most common names.
We found 29 different winners named John, including Oscar winner John Wayne, comedy legend (and BAFTA winner) John Cleese and, of course, Grammy and Brit award winner, John Lennon.
For girls, the most likely winning name was slightly more surprising, with 11 winners named ‘Kim’. These included Brit winner Kim Wilde, Oscar winner Kim Basinger and former Wimbledon champ Kim Clijsters.
John Wayne
John Cleese
John Lennon
Kim Wilde
Kim Basinger
Kim Clijsters
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If you’re hoping that your little one will be the next big sporting icon, then David could be the name to go with, if you want them to follow in the footsteps of winners such as David Beckham (former BBC Sports Personality of the Year).
For girls, the most likely name to achieve sporting success was Laura, followed by Kim, Lauren and Mary.
David Beckham
David Boudia
David Verburg
Laura Davies
Laura Kenny
Laura Kraut
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And in the world of entertainment, George and John were the two names most commonly associated with award winners (Paul was fifth for males names, but no sign of Ringo!).
Other winning Georges in entertainment include George Michael (Grammy and Brit award winner), George Clooney (Oscar winner) and George Ezra (Brit award winner).
George Clooney
George Ezra
George Michael
Anne Bancroft
Anne Baxter
Anne Hathaway
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We looked at the first names of over 2,000 individuals who have won various awards in the fields of sport and entertainment. Some of the types of awards which we looked at to create this list include:
Academy Awards
BAFTAs
Grammys
Brit Awards
BBC Sports Personality Awards
ESPY Awards
Olympic gold medallists from the USA and Great Britain since 1996
If an individual had won more than one award then we only considered their name once, for example, Serena Williams has won 7 Wimbledon singles championships, four Olympic gold medals and 12 ESPY awards, but for the purposes of this research, we only considered the name Serena as one ‘winner’.
We also chose to only use the names that the winners actually went by, rather than combining names together such as ‘Robert’, ‘Bob’ and ‘Bobby’.
