What’s in a name? Or to put it another way how does your name help determine the outcome of your life? If at all.

Your name and destiny

Well names and destiny do seem to be linked. Scary perhaps but true. According to research carried out in the late sixties (1) people with strongly unusual names are more likely to suffer psychiatric illness such as psychosis. Another peace of research seems to show that teachers award higher essay grades to children with likable names (2) and that college students with less popular names suffer higher degrees of social isolation and that people who have surnames with undesirable and negative connotations such as ’short’ or ‘bent’ or ‘little’ are more likely to suffer feelings of inferiority.

Also, presumably, negative nick names may produce similar effects. This article looks at the power of our initials to influence our lives. Other research shows that names and initials can influence our choice of career, town we live in, likelihood of dying and choice of marriage partner! Can this be right?

Just how suggestible are we?

Well as we argue in Suggestibility: How to be an Einstein, we are all more suggestible than we like to think. Christenfeld, Phillips and Glynn from the University of California used an electronic dictionary to generate every three letter word in the English language. Some words such as ‘HUG, JOY and ACE’ were labeled ‘positive’ whilst words such as ‘PIG, BUM and DIE’ were labeled’ negative.’ Next the researchers used a computerized database of Californian death certificates and examined the age at which people with ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ sets of initials passed away. Allowing for social-economic status, race, etc. they discovered that men with positive initials lived an average of four and a half years longer than average whereas men with negative initials died about three years earlier than average. Women with positive initials lived around three years longer. The causes of death from negative initials tended to have psychological underpinnings such as suicide. This research has been criticized but the fact that there is any correlation is surely food for thought.

Every Tom Dick and Harry is named John

Lest we get too negative about all this there may be some advantages in having an unusual name. ‘Tiger woods’ (surely the best golfing name ever!) is more memorable than ‘John Smith’ - unusual names can get us noticed. For example the Whose Who directory contains more famous people with unusual names (3)

Other research has shown there is an over representation of people called Florence living in Florida, George in Georgia, Kenneth in Kentucky and Virgil in Virginia. People seem to drift to cities containing their own name. We are also more likely statistically to marry someone whose surname starts with the same initial as our own. More couples share the same initial than predicted by chance.

Naming your career

There are more dentists whose first names start with the letters DEN and more lawyers whose names start with the letters LAW. Roofers are more likely to have an R initial and Hardware store owners to have a name beginning with H. In 2000 G initialed people were much more likely to vote for Gore and B’s to vote for the ‘Bush’ campaign. This research (carried out by Lawrence Cassler of the State University of New York) showed an underwater archeologist called Bass a relationship counselor called Breedlove a tax expert named Due, a gynecologist named Hyman and a psychologist specialising in parental pressure called Mumpower. There are so many more examples in a similar vain that I can’t squeeze them in. All this exceeds pure chance.

Of course all of us can’t be that influenced by our own names but I have to say I am pleased to have changed from my old dentist ‘Mr. Grimes’

All the best

MJT

(1) Arthur Hartman and Robert Nicolay examined more than 10,000 psychiatric court records and found that those people with highly unusual first names such as Oder, Lethal and Vere were significantly more likely than a control group to be diagnosed as psychotic.

(2) H.Harari and J.W.McDavid-name stereotypes and teachers’ expectations’, journal of educational psychology 65 Pages 222-5 1973

(3) Zweigenhaft (an unusual name in my book) discovered that an unusual name may be good for your career.