something about that name...

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet." Juliet, Romeo and Juliet.

Sorry, J., it seems that there is much more in a name, according to recent studies.

According to a study at Miami University in Ohio by Robin Thomas, names evoke certain characteristics in people. In this study, one group of subjects created faces to given names using face construction software (as used by the police), and the other group given a choice between the face the former created and others. Subjects tended to associate one name over another with certain characteristics, as shown by the fact that the second group chose the faces created by the first group more frequently, and the difference was statistically significant.

The subjects also had a harder time learning names of people if their characteristics did not match what they expected from their names.

But why?

One hypothesis suggests the way names sound may be important. For example, in the figure below included in the article, Bob, with the long O, sounds more round than say, Tim. 

The link to the original article, published in Psychonomic Bulletin 

& Review in 2007, to read the exact methods.

Another hypothesis suggests certain names are associated with certain social characteristics, and certain social characteristics are associated with certain facial structures. A>B, B>C therefore A>C, names to faces.

An "interesting" survey from the French dating site, Smartdate, found that women who have names ending in "-a" are more "promiscuous" than those whose names do not. This study which has been getting a lot of hype because, it's ridicuously interesting- a guide to what not to name your baby girl- but has a lot of problems. (I also found it interesting that the Thomas article opened with baby-naming situation- that hook.)

First, this is a dating site. Not representative of the normal French population. Second, French names rarely end in -a, meaning that many of the users are not "traditionally" French, and probably from another culture. Third, f promiscuity was defined by number of partners, which I think is not such an accurate "measure of promiscuity".

Another study by Mehrabian of UCLA rated how individuals perceived owners of certain names on scale of ethical caring, popular fun, successful, and masculine-feminine, and similarly, it was found that people tend to attribute certain characteristics to certain names.

Anyway, I've found that people associate names with personalities, often stating things like: "all the Alice's I've met are super sweet", or "all the Matt's I know are uber jocks". However, these conversations tend to end in clashes and curious observations where each person who has observed such patterns discovers another person has had totally different experiences with such name-bearers. Zing! I mean, there are like a gazillion different names out there- you tend to meet only a few with any given name, and it's not unusual for them to share certain aspects.

I'm interested in the sound/name association though. Couple of years ago, (I hope this is a related point- do you see it?) my local South Tampa radio station invited listeners to call in and say the word "meatloaf". And the host could tell if they were fat or not, as confirmed or denied by the callers.

Yawnnnn. Need to get my 7 hours in now!