Vacuum

How many people do you need to know before it's likely that two have the same name?

How many people do you need to know before it's likely that two have the same full name?

The answer is going to depend critically on the pool of people you are sampling from, and whether you count people in multiple generations as Sr., Jr. as "same name". Similarly, middle initials or middle names will be distinguishing marks. What I'm after is less about collisions within a family and more about two John Jones in your addressbook, otherwise completely unrelated.

I suspect that the number is in the low thousands, just from personal experience. 

How would you approach this problem?

Zot! Why I love reading other blogs about writing

I love it to read over-the-top lead paragraphs from posts like this one:

ALL WE WRITERS CRAVE is to charge into the resistant, overloaded brain of a reader and shoot forked lightning through every last dendrite. Why else, if not to achieve high-voltage impact, do we push our own synapses into the red zone night after night, year after year? (Twelve Non-Negotiable Elements of Force in Writing, from Daily Writing Tips)

Zot! Now you, dear reader, have a suitably cooked brain, and my words are going to make it into what remains of your thinker like a knife through scrambled eggs.