BrainStuff Classics: Does Your Name Determine Your Future?

What's in a name? Research shows that your name can indeed influence your career and your behavior. Learn how in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff. Lauren vog Obam here with a classic episode
from our former host, Christian Sader. This is one where
the research really surprised us, the topic does your name
determine your future? Hey brain Stuff? This is Christian Sager.

(00:25):
Everyone has a name. I just gave you mine. That's
extraordinary though, when you think about it, because it's one
of the very few social things that all human beings
have in common. No matter who you are, where you live,
or what you do with your life, you and everyone
else has a name. You might be a Kevin, a Felicia,
a Mohammed, a Holly, and so on. It's part of

(00:46):
your identity and helps separate you from the teeming mass
of humanity. But how much does your name affect you?
Could it determine your future? Well, it doesn't determine your
life exactly. Economists Steve Levitt and Roland Friar studied decades
worth of children's names, only to find that what your
parents name you doesn't really impact your economic future. So

(01:10):
you're not doomed to poverty just because your name is
Earnest or something. But your name will certainly affect your future.
A study called are You Ready? Are Emily and Greg
more employable than Lakisha and Jamal unearthed at least one
disturbing trend about names. Job applicants with equal qualifications or

(01:32):
even otherwise identical resumes are about fifty more likely to
get a callback if they have a white sounding name.
This indicates that despite numerous laws, discrimination still thrives in
the workplace. Your name doesn't just tell people about you.
It tells people about your parents and gives them away
to place you in their vision of society. This isn't

(01:54):
about whether their vision is correct. That's prejudice, but it
does affect how people with these expectations in mindsets will
address and interact with you. And that's not all. Your
name may also play a role in your career. This
theory is called nominative determinism, the idea that your name
may affect the way you interact with the world, including

(02:16):
anything from donations to your choice of career. For example,
is someone named Helen Painter more likely to be an artist?
Or is someone named Jimmy Hogg more likely to work
with pigs? Matthew Meirenberg and John Jones think so in
their study and here we go with another name. Why

(02:36):
Susie sells Seashells by the Sea Shore, Implicit egotism and
Major Life Decisions classic academic title. These researchers found that
people are more likely to choose careers whose labels resemble
their own names. So, to use one of their examples,
people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among can you

(02:57):
guess it Yeah dentists. Dentists Dennis, Denise, Mehrenberg, and Jones
believe this happens because people prefer things that they connect
with themselves, including their own names. Other scientists, like University
of Pennsylvania's Urie Simonson, are skeptical about this whole idea.
Are we drawing tenuous conclusions where none exists just to

(03:20):
support a neat idea? Well, for the record, Simonson does
suppose that nominative determinism might explain why people named Rachel
might be more likely to donate in the wake of
Hurricane Rhea, because as weird as this might sound, that
similarity just starting with the letter are triggered some sense
of identification. We haven't even talked about name changes or

(03:43):
the weird name changes people have tried in court. I'm
looking at you, Romanico, Sir Tasty Maximilian, Yeah, that is
his real name. We haven't talked about all the multi
generational popularity cycle they experience either, or, as we like
to call it, the rise and fall of the Brittany's
and ash Leaves. Today's episode was written by Ben Bolan

(04:12):
and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production
of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in
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