Three Letter Words

Have you ever noticed how men's names are generally three letters long?

Or at least one syllable.

Rob

Dan

Bob

Mike

Blake

Dave

Jack

John (or Jon)

...the list goes on and on.

It's an amazement to me.  I would say at least 90% of the men I meet are introduced with a single syllable name.  Then there's about 5% that are introduced as "Michael"...and they mean "Michael", not "Mike".

I wonder what's behind the single syllable.  I tried doing some research on it and found that there are at least a million hits about using single names for boys, but not for girls.  One site did try to give examples of single syllable names for girls, but it was a real stretch "Skye" (Gaelic), "Mare" (Gaelic), and "Fleur" (French) were names...but they're not English names.  Of course, the same site spelled "Arte" as "Art", so you can't really believe much of what was written there.  Sad because it's near the top of the hit list.  I won't dignify the site with a link.

Anyway, what I find interesting is that most girl names are two or three syllables:

Jennifer

Samantha

Kimberly

Stefani (Stephanie, Steffany...spelling doesn't matter)

Christine

Katherine

(and the most commons):  Sophia and Elizabeth

Now what I also find interesting is that boys do have more pack mentality than girls.  We all KNOW that's true- girls that run in cliques are not packs- they're individuals trying to use each other to get boys attention, where as boys are definitely a pack- they either lead or follow.  And my own antedotal experience is that men with single syllable names are more often to be found in packs than multi-syllable named men-

Michaels and Jonathans don't usually run in the pack, but Mikes and Johns do.

I don't know if there is any real sociological research done on humans, but there is a LOT of research done showing that single syllable names are recommended for naming dogs if you want to maintain superiority.

The reason?

Single syllables are easier to order around.

Honest.

So...what does that say about single syllables in people?