What's In A (CEO) Name? Ask LinkedIn

Courtesy of Peter Kim comes an interesting study of the top CEO names on LinkedIn. According to the popular professional networking site's blog, "you can find 100 million professionals, their first names and their corresponding career histories (or, as our data science team calls it, a fun project waiting to happen)."

As the team digs into the data, some interesting trends emerge; for instance this one concerning gender dynamics at the executive level:

"...over-indexed CEO names tend to be either short or shortened versions of popular first names. Onomastics specialist Dr. Frank Nuessel suggests that shortened versions of given names are often used to denote a sense of friendliness and openness. Female CEOs, on the other hand, use their full name to project a more professional image."

In case you're wondering, the top name for men is Peter and for women is Deborah. (And also, in case you're wondering as I was, the LinkedIn Labs team doesn't mention controlling for the rampant title inflation on LinkedIn.)