Count of element in array

[Anonymous]

You're looking for GROUP BY. Something like this:

SELECT first_name, COUNT(first_name) GROUP BY first_name;

 

[gesf]

That's it!
I think there's even the possibility of doing something like:

mysql > SELECT DISTINCT(first_name), COUNT(first_name) FROM table;

This way you'll get only 1 instance for each name with its respective number (of times repited).