Background: First names have been studied as an indicator of an individual’s background, and have been shown to have associations with socioeconomic status and discriminatory practices. There are many studies in the literature that demonstrate discrimination against traditionally black names and studies have shown some names can be predictive of socioeconomic status independent of race.
Objectives: To determine the prevalence of non-common names among Matched applicants of different specialties.
Methods: In this observational study 2024 United States Residency Match lists (from
18 institutions from 14 different states) were obtained through convenience sampling, and a total of 2378 Matched applicants were identified. Match participant names were compared with the 200 most common names (according to the Social Security website) of three consecutive decades from the 1980s through the 2000s to cover the expected birth years of the applicants in the 2024 residency Match cycle, and designated as common or non-common. The frequency of non-common names was reported by specialty.
Results: Of the 2378 Matched applicants, 1023 (43.0%) of which had non-common names. Non-common names were significantly over-represented in internal medicine (47.8% non-common, p=0.023), general surgery (51.8% non-common, p=0.032), and dermatology (56.5% non-common, p=0.062). They were a trend toward over-representation in pediatrics (35.9% non-common, p=0.041) and orthopedic surgery (34.1% non-common, p=0.079) They were a trend toward under-representation.
Conclusion: This study establishes a novel, easily replicable metric that may serve as a baseline for suggesting variations in the distribution of non-common names across specialties over time.