On a damp Sunday when you should be doing other things, what better procrastination activity than plot a graph of author surnames that occur on one’s blog. Very silly I know, but I did this before on my old blog, back in 2011 – and this morning I rediscovered that old post – and had to do it again.
Here’s my picture from 2011:
Back then, I even had time to count the number of posts as well as author names.
The results: – 6 letters stood out way in front of any others – B, C, H, M, S, T, with the Ms just winning. There were zero entries for E, I, U, X, Y and Z
This time, I’ve only totted up the author numbers, not the posts.
B, C, H, M, S, T are joined in the popularity stakes by F, P and W, but M is still in the lead.
The only gap now is X. (I have read a book by Xinran, but that was pre-blog).
The significance: – Still don’t ask me! I don’t think I consciously favour authors beginning with a particular letter, as those 6 are distributed evenly throughout the alphabet. M includes Mc and Mac, so is quite likely to show up well in anyone’s list. I’d wager, as I read more books, the graph will come to approximate general surname stats – that’s pure conjecture without a shread of evidence to back it up.
Fun though!
