Presidential Numerology

The Sandbox Political Topics
1

The last 3 presidents have had names with 5 letter last names
The last 10 presidents have averaged just over 5 letters, with all but one being between 4 and 6 letters
Only one (Trump) am I aware that their name was shortened from it’s original
Seven of these presidents had names with 5 letters or fewer
Eight of all the prior presidents had names with 5 letters or fewer

But, wait, there’s more. The last eight major party presidential runner-ups have average just over 5 letters as well, with all but one being between 4 and 6 letters. And the one outlier of 7 letters for President and runner-up have the same name. If Hillary went by her given (maiden) name, we would have averaged exactly 5 letters.

Presidential names have always been rather simple, easy to spell and say, with a few exceptions - Eisenhower, Roosevelt - which were both pretty well known by the time they first ran for President.

So, statistical anomaly? A global warming of names? Do Buttigieg or Klobuchar have a chance of ever being President, just based on naming?

2

Buttigieg’s name issue has less to do with its length imo :crazy_face:

3

Hmmm, I see your point. VPs seem to have short names too:

Harris (6)
Pence (5)
Biden (5)
Cheney (6)
Gore (4)
Quayle (6)
Bush (4)
Mondale (7)
Rockefeller… ouch!

BUT… Rockefeller never ran, he was appointed. Ford’s running mate in 1976 was Dole.

4

Now do the number of syllables

5

Obama - highest syllable / letter ratio
Eisenhower - only 4 syllable name
Cleveland - highest letter / syllable ratio for a multi syllable name
Pierce is the longest singular syllable name

edited as per below

6

How do you pronounce Pierce?

(And Hayes, for that matter! :wink:)

7

ty, I erred

1 Like
8

It would be interesting to compare this to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Is it an American thing or an English language thing?

9

Someone else will have to take up that.

As for Canada, French names throw in a lot of extra syllables and silent letters

10

I’ve got a pet little theory about this. You see, if you go back in history and take every president, you’ll find that the numerical value of each letter in their last name was equally divisible into the year in which they were elected. You see, I figured it out. By my calculations, the next president has to be named Yelnik McWawa.

11

I think the pollical selection process is so geared toward lowest common denominator that one result of that process is a series of simple names.

one way for politians to overcome this it to change their name to something more appeasing: case in point, Tom Haverford.

12

I mean, the last names need to be short enough to fit on the scantron.

13

The first two Canadian Prime Ministers were Macdonald and Mackenzie, both nine letters and three syllables. The leader in both letters and syllables was John Diefenbaker who served in the late 70s and early 80s.

14

It’s more than just the political process. Everything about America’s comsumerism/capitalfirst society drives Americans to be simpleminded dumb folk driven by their feelings.

15

You might your cause/effect backwards there.
It’s also possible they been like that from the beginning of The Republic. Or before.

16

Eisenhower’s nickname of “Ike” helped him in TV ads.

I remember the 1996 RNC when there were cheers of “Dole-Kemp” among crowd members. I thought it sounded very much like “Bull-Shit.”

17

What next, Horoscopes of The Presidents?

Thought we were a little more skeptical of pseudosciences 'round these parts.

18

Nope, People are ignorant and people have needs. People tend to be smart about things that fill those needs. Consumerism is based on wants, generating wants and feeding desires. Educated buyers are harder to sell to. So everyone that’s selling does what they can to bias and misinform consumers to keep them dumb about their product (some people call that branding). Our society is absolutely driven by selling. So a society full of dumb, desire driven individuals is a byproduct of consumerism.