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Comment by freyir | Hacker News Reader

The Human Palindrome will be born tomorrow and die on 2121-12-12 at the age of 101. And in true palindromic fashion, his life will start and end with diapers.

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Note that there are ~360,000 babies born everyday.

On average today, 70% of Americans live to the age of 65. That rate varies greatly from country to country, but let’s assume that due to improvements in medical science and wealth, the likelihood of anyone born today, worldwide, being 50%.

After that, it’s a bit tougher. But today, the likelihood of a person aged 65 reaching the age of 100 is 3%. I couldn’t find data on the odds of 101, but let’s assume that this percentage will also be 3% in the future.

This means that there are approximately 5400 babies born today, that should reach 101. So almost certainly there is someone who will qualify as a Human Palindrome?

As mentioned, there are only two of these special 101 year gaps, in the 10,000 years from 0 to 10,000. Almost certainly there were no cases of this from 1000 to 1100?

So some baby born today will almost certainly become a trivia question answer for hundreds (thousands?) of years to come? Based on nothing more than the day they were born.

There are quite a few life tables, vide https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html.

It seems that roughly for 360k babies there should be 1 man and 8 women dying at that age (death rate is ~60% per year). Of course, assuming US death rates, and technology as of today. Given that most kids are being born in poorer regions, and that global warming my seriously affect life span (especially in these regions), the results may be significantly lower.

Any responsible parent will call him Bob or Anna, of course. Taking surnames into account is going to be a bit harder.

Here's a good resource for anyone becoming a parent today: https://parentinghealthybabies.com/palindrome-names/

Oof, that list is terrible. Natan is listed twice, and there’s at least one name that isn’t a palindrome. The only two names that really work from that list is Anna and Hannah. Nobody should name their kid Bob in 2020, it’s not a «young» name yet. Thr older Bobs need to die off before it’s an acceptable kid’s name.

As for the rest of those names, I refuse to acknowledge them as names. They’re more like onomatopoeia.

Are you saying “Ada Lovelace” had a fake name? :)

Ada, Ava, Eve and Viv are all names I’ve seen in the wild and would consider reasonable names too. There’s also nothing wrong with Bob, despite what you seem to think. So together with Anna and Hannah, that’s 7 names.

They’re names, but like Bob, they’re not names that fit kids. Names are like fashion, they come in cycles. If your name is off-cycle, it’ll often sound a generation or two too far removed.

All of you are just talking about American name fashions. The point of 20200202 is that it's a palindrome in every single country and culture that uses AD and the Gregorian calendar. Many of these names may be very suitable in other cultures.

One of the names in that list should be Aziza, instead of Azia. It means dear or precious in Arabic.

Mike Kim, Able Elba (perhaps related to actor Idris), Renee Keener, or Lia Vail. Source:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-first-name-last-name-com...

Edit! One I just thought of while brushing my teeth:

Errol Lorre (perhaps related to Peter?)

Someone like Bob Anna or Anna Bob

s/will call him/will have called him/

Only way to be sure is to name all 360,000 of them palindromically...

Their name will be otto

Fun, clever, and witty comments are increasingly rare here on YC. Thank you for this.

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