Serial Killers Middle Name Lee serial#

That's over 11% of them! This number seems particularly high, but the only article I found that listed data on the percentage of honorific names in the population referred to studies from the 1940's.

Serial Killers Middle Name Lee serial#

Out of 201 names, 23 of these serial killers have Jr/III/IV at the end of their names.

However, I'm going to use the term here to specifically refer to names directly taken from fathers and grandfathers, names that end in Jr., III, IV, etc. This could be anything from using Charlotte to honor Uncle Charlie, Ruby to honor Grandma's birthstone, Denali in honor of her parents' honeymoon site, etc. The name community uses the term 'honorific name' to refer to the practice of choosing a name for a child that celebrates a relative, friend, or place important to the parents. Which brings me to another interesting finding. The name has been decreasing in popularity since 1900, and since many of the killers listed were born in the twentieth century, it may indicate that their families had stronger-than-average ties to the South, or the tradition of using honorific names. Lee - many Southern parents chose the name Lee to honor him in the decades after the war. Lee's popularity over time is directly related to the Confederate Civil War general Robert E. I'm eager to access real data someday and follow this theory. Wayne! Based on my not-super-scientific data, there may be a correlation between criminals and use of the name. The other two names rank much lower for the general male population versus the serial killer summation: Lee and Wayne. Of the 13 names listed above, 11 fall into the 25 most popular names for men in the United States over the past century: Joseph, Edward, John, Richard, David, Robert, Michael, Charles, William, James, Anthony. * = One name would be added if nicknames were to be included A majority of these men were active in the twentieth century. These are men of varying ages, mostly white, with some black and Latino individuals. Using this Wikipedia entry (obviously not complete, but a decent representation) and discarding the names of female killers, I came up with a group of 201 names. What else can name data tell us about 'deviants'? I decided to look at the data on the first, middle, and adopted names of serial killers in the United States. What if men of a certain personality - hyper-masculine, traditional, intimidating - named their sons after a hero of mid-century cinema, John Wayne? And what if these men were more likely to raise children who would exhibit criminal behaviors?

I'm not going to draw any dramatic conclusions until I can look at real data and sift through the complicated links between predictive factors for criminal behavior, but some theories have come to mind. Family relationships, class, financial status, race, gender, and environment all factor in to the likelihood of someone becoming a criminal - could names indicate these factors early on?

While there's no real evidence of this phenomenon - the United States doesn't collect or publish data on middle names, as far as I can tell - the idea that one's name might predict later criminal behavior was fascinating to me. Years ago, I read an article online that claimed Wayne was more popular as a middle name among criminals ( here's a more recent article on the 'Wayne Theory') than in the general population. Edmund Emil Kemper III, the 'Co-Ed Killer'