Arie's 'Bachelor' Season Has 4 Laurens & That's Not Even The Most Ever

If you’ve been leafing through the contestants for Arie’s season of The Bachelor, you’re probably saying things to yourself like, “Wow, these women are wearing a lot of ‘going out’ tops in these photos” and, “Huh, I didn’t know that many women were named Lauren.” Arie’s season of The Bachelor is a Lauren convention, basically. It’s a perfectly nice name, but for some reason, the producers of Arie’s season of The Bachelor cast not one, not two, not three, but four women who all go by the name of Lauren. Does Arie’s season have the most Laurens ever? As a longtime Bachelor fan and amateur sleuth, I decided to investigate.

It was really hard to find the information about the beginning seasons because, although the Internet was a thing and existed and everything, it wasn’t like it is now. People weren’t documenting the moves of the Bachelor contestants and stalking their relative social media accounts. Social media didn’t exist! And also, a lot of these links have died because they’re a decade old. So after a mix of Wikipedia deep dives and trying to find really old articles on the ABC press site, this is what I came up with — Arie’s season does not, in fact, have the most Laurens out of any season of The Bachelor ever. Surprised? Me, too.

There was virtually no information on contestants from a few seasons of The Bachelor, but for argument's sake, let’s say that the first Lauren on The Bachelor didn’t appear until Season 13, which Jason Mesnick's season. That was Lauren Wanger. There was one more Lauren — Lauren Moore — in Season 15, Brad Womack’s do-over season. The next Lauren, last name Marchetti, appeared in Sean Lowe’s Season 17. Laurens Solomon and Higginson appeared in Season 18 (and so did Juan Pablo, but we don’t like to be reminded of that, do we?). Then, we hit critical Lauren mass in Season 20, when Ben Higgins romanced four — count ‘em — four Laurens, with one Lauren (Bushnell), bringing home a ring and his heart. There were so many Laurens that one Lauren, Lauren “LB” Barr, was forced to go by her initials in order to differentiate herself. The others were Laurens Himle and Russell. Nick Viall had only one Lauren — Lauren Hussey — in his season, which brings us to today, Arie’s season, with a whopping four Laurens, being Lauren B., Lauren G., Lauren J., and Lauren S. That means that Arie and Ben Higgins tie for the Lauren trophy.

If you’re thinking something along the lines of, “Wow, there have to be more names in this world besides Lauren,” you’re right. But there’s also a great anthropological reason for the name Lauren invading The Bachelor. According to the Social Security Administration, the name Lauren peaked in popularity for girls around 1989. But even in 2000, it was still wildly popular, and plenty of little girls were being named Lauren as everyone was panicking about Y2K. (If you don’t know what Y2K is or don’t remember it, I’m going to guess that your name is not Lauren). If you were born around 1989, there was a good chance that you were named Lauren, and if you were born around 1989 and decided to join Ben Higgins’ season of The Bachelor in 2016, that would make you about 25, which is prime time age to be on The Bachelor. And because the name Lauren didn’t start to wane in popularity until the new millennium, it makes sense that Lauren is a popular name with the women on Arie’s season of The Bachelor.

So did the producers of The Bachelor plan to have that many Laurens on Ben's or Arie's seasons? It's doubtful. It's a regular old case of freakonomics and coincidence here — there are more Laurens in the world between the ages of 20 and 35 than any other age group, and that happens to be the age group of women who contend on The Bachelor. When The Bachelor is on Season 40 (it will be, just you wait), the hopeful men will be swarmed with Sophias, Emmas, Avas, and Olivias — it's just the name (pun intended) of the game.