Spell My Name with an ‘N’

Something occurred to me a couple of months ago, when I was looking back on the results of the last French presidential election. See if you can spot what’s interesting here.

The top six candidates — Macron, Le Pen, Fillon, Mélenchon, Hamon and Dupont-Aignan — all have surnames ending in an ‘n’. The other five — Lassalle, Poutou, Asselineau, Arthaud, Cheminade — are not so blessed. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

Of the 25 most common surnames in the UK, eight end in ‘n’ (Brown, Wilson, Johnson, Robinson, Thompson, Green, Martin and Jackson). How does this compare to the surnames of those in Parliament?

127 of our representatives — around 1 in 5 — have the 14th letter of the alphabet at the end of their name. Here’s the breakdown:

Conservatives: 55
Labour: 53
SNP: 8
DUP: 6
Other: 5

By my reckoning, that would put a Labour-SNP coalition in government, if they could get the support of the Lib Dems. But does having an ‘n’ at the end of their name give a politician a boost?

In the 2016 Labour leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson both beat a host of n-less candidates. For around 1/3 of the past 100 years, Britain had a be-n’ed leader (Baldwin, Eden, Macmillan, Wilson, Callaghan, Brown, Cameron). The same is true of the US, although there has been a drought since 2001 (Wilson, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton).

During general elections over this period, comparing just the major parties, the ‘n’ candidate won in 1923, 1924, 1931, 1935, 1955, 1959, 1964, 1966, 1974 (twice) and 2015, and only lost in 1929, 1970, 1979 and 2017, with a head-to-head between Cameron and Brown in 2010. In the US, the count is a much tighter seven (1948, 1964, 1968, 1980, 1984, 1992 and 1996) to six (1936, 1952, 1956, 1960, 2008 and 2016). Nixon beat the Democrats’ George McGovern in 1972.

Surely this proves that wherever you are in the world, ending your name with an ‘n’ is the key to political success? Except that Germany hasn’t had one since Frank von Papen, just two months before the rise of Hitler. And the last French president before Macron was the fascist collaborator Phillipe Pétain.

Whatever, it’s clear to me that my failure to break into politics so far is down to that extra letter on the end of my name. [Final line removed for anonymisation]