> Pope names form a fairly limited set.

Does it? For starters consider that "Francis" was a new name - he's the first pope to use it.

He was also the first pope in a millennium to pick an entirely new name (John Paul I obviously was the first pope John Paul, but he picked two names that has a very long tradition, and that are obviously names with a very special connection to the church; consider also that some disliked that John Paul I broke new ground that way, even though it involved using two very well respected traditional names).

> I bet if you asked 100,000 Catholics to guess the next pope's name, > 0 would get it right. I'm actually surprised there isn't tons of speculation about it. Maybe it's not a "thing" or sacrilegious or this sort of speculation is not on the Internet?

[EDIT: The paper actually mentions that they did find one single mention of Pope Francis, which was then reviewed and found to be overtly speculative, so they did run into this]

Maybe. Maybe not. But there is speculation about pope names. A lot of it. And apparently despite lots and lots of articles that were written about it none of them got it right.

Of course not representative, but here's a poll that was conducted before Bergoglio was elected, with about 5k votes: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2013/02/poll-what-name-will-the-next-...

Of those, 694 picked the "???? the First" option, which was the correct answer. But most seems to expect a name with tradition.

Here is another example of speculation back in 2008, from before Ratzinger was elected:

http://papam.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/possible-names-for-the...

And here is one gives the list of papal names _after_ Francis was chosen, and points out that his successor _could_ choose to do like Francis, but pope Francis was the _first pope to do so since the tenth century_, as mentioned above. So prior to Francis, there was a millennium long tradition creating a strong expectation that Bergoglio/Francis would pick from the list of past names rather than break new ground.

Here's one from before Francis was chosen, which speculates on names, and suggests the most likely names would come from the list of past popes, and gives some suggestions:

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/moving_forward_what...

Here's a blog post reproducing a graph from The Economist with names, coupled with betting odds on the names:

http://www.davidlose.net/2013/03/what-name-will-the-next-pop...

Knowing, as we do now, that he was willing to ignore the list, many might have guessed Francis, but I'm much less confident they would before.. Especially given that from a few searches it appears that even now most appears to expect the next pope again to most likely pick one of the traditional names.

Here's another one:

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3712/predicting-next-pop...

This also lists odds from the bookmaker Paddy Power, giving Leo 3-to-1, Peter 2-to-1, Gregory 6-to-1, Pius 8-to-1. And he gave "Joseph" as his one new name.

One of the commenters then goes on to reference a CNN article on the name choice, that says amongst others this:

> Allen described the name selection as "the most stunning" choice and "precedent shattering."

> "There are cornerstone figures in Catholicism," such as St. Francis, Allen said. Figures of such stature as St. Francis of Assisi seem "irrepeatable -- that there can be only one Francis," he added.

Maybe others would feel differently - that Francis would be a good name exactly because of how important St. Francis of Assisi is to the church, but this is nevertheless an interesting reaction.