Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in the November print edition.
When Ethan Thai was 17, he left Vietnam and immigrated to the United States with the help of family members who sponsored his move.
Ethan, whose Vietnamese name was Gia Hung Thai, looked to find an American name for himself. He decided to base his name on Tom Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt, the main character in “Mission: Impossible.”
Fast forward, and he’s a junior in business administration at Cal Poly. The university was his top choice, partly because of its ideal location— not too close but not too far from home.
It just so happened that Ethan also picked one of the most common names at Cal Poly.
“I am surprised,” Thai said. “I didn’t know that it was the third [most] popular name.”
From the 23,400 students, the most popular names in order are Ryan, Jack and Ethan, according to data gathered by Mustang News using the 2024 Cal Poly student directory. The fourth and fifth ranks are traditional feminine names, Emma and Sophia.
“I kind of knew that my name was one of the most popular names in the world,” theater arts sophomore Emma Frank said. “I think I’ve looked it up before. It doesn’t surprise me that much.”
The most popular name at Cal Poly is Ryan, with 206 people sharing the first name. With 23,400 students on campus, that is approximately one in 125.
Although one in 125 is common, there is no guarantee that people will run into name twins.
“I’ve seen one other Ryan on campus,” construction management freshman Ryan Le said. “I don’t know, it’s just a name.”
Although Ryan is the most popular name on campus, Jack isn’t far behind.
“Through high school, I knew a lot of Jacks, and again at Cal Poly, I met a bunch of people named Jack or an offshoot of Jack like Jackson or Jacks,” art and design freshman Jack Meyer said.
Cal Poly’s overall top names are reflected in the most popular names through the different academic colleges. However, more apparent is how the different academic colleges have vastly different proportions of female and male students.
For example, the College of Engineering’s most popular names are all masculine, while the College of Liberal Arts top names are feminine. This reflects the gender divide between colleges, as seen below.
According to 2023 data from Cal Poly Institutional Research, 53% of Cal Poly’s student population identify as women, 46% as men, and 0.23% as non-binary. Each college has different female-to-male ratios. The College of Liberal Arts has the largest gender gap, followed by the College of Engineering.
When looking at Cal Poly’s student population as a whole, the drastic gender disparity present in some of the academic colleges can be easily overlooked.
Jack and Ryan hold a continued popularity. Notably, Olivia is the most popular name for juniors, while not present in the overall top 10.
