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There is a question of mine that sometimes makes me chuckle. A trivial, very non-urgent question with little to no practical value. A question on why names starting with "J" are more common than words starting with "J", within the English language naturally. I expected to perhaps have to put a bounty on it, to ever get a good answer, but quite surprisingly, the question gained a lot of attention. Ninety-something upvotes, 15K views and many answers/comments, the top one scoring 150 upvotes.

I have pondered over why, and my most reasonable explanation is that the question is quite unique, requesting information that users on this don't usually have to access. I am not quite sure about that one though, as the top answer I believe dealt a lot with Hebrew etymology, which is quite commonplace in the English language. Perhaps it was the format? I don't know, what do you think?

EDIT: User Mari-LouA let me know that most likely the bulk of visits came from HNQ, but she also had a point about why the question might have summoned curiosity in the readers. She laid up two camps, a) Native speakers who weren't aware of this difference, and b) People who were, and upvoted due to their pre-existing curiosity.

Which camp do/did you belong in?

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    Did the question make it to the Hot Network Questions? I bet it did, and I'll also bet the bulk of 15K visits was due to that.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Aug 14, 2019 at 8:24
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    If HNQ is the cause of so much attention, we're back to asking why did it capture users' interest. Two possible scenarios, a) the question was quirky and original. Possibly native speakers had never thought of the letter J being more common in names. b) Many users had asked themselves the same thing and when they saw the post they were curious to find an answer.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Aug 14, 2019 at 8:29
  • I haven't thought of that. Which one of the two scenarios do you think it is? Had you thought about the question posed before? @Mari-LouA
    – A. Kvåle
    Aug 14, 2019 at 15:31
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    I belong to the a) camp. It never occurred to me that people's names beginning with "J" was more common than in other words.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Aug 14, 2019 at 15:42
  • Hmm, interesting. I think I will edit my question where I have both of these options, and see which camp most people belong in. @Mari-LouA
    – A. Kvåle
    Aug 14, 2019 at 15:45
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    @Mari-LouA yeah it was the meta question I was talking about
    – A. Kvåle
    Aug 14, 2019 at 15:48
  • You can't use names in scrabble, surely.
    – marcellothearcane
    Aug 15, 2019 at 18:16

1 Answer 1

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Here's an answer for Camp A votes: It never occurred to us that people's names beginning with "J" was more common than in other words.

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