The Name Game

From „The Psychologist” march 2008 [http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archieve/archieve_home.cfm?volumeID=21&editionID=158&ArticleID=1319]

Abbrevation and compilation by Maciej Richert

There is some defining moments in a person life, like coming-of-age ceremonies, near-death experiences and also when the person is named. Names seems instead to shape an individual and have connection with our lives, so psychologist have done many researches about it. The simplest way to show how important name is, we should observe that in most languages people say “I am Nicholas”, not “I am called Nicholas”.

Effects of psychologist research about correspondence between names and people are not claiming the same. We should remember, that parents do not give their child only the name, but genotype and upbringing too. That means, if somebody is called “Big Loser Smith”, his problems in life could not be connected with name.

Whatever most of researches suggest that names may well matter sufficiently to warrant careful attention from parents. Of course surnames are very important too. In small communities there was no need to use surnames. In West people were obligated to get surnames by William the Conqueror to facilitate taxation of land-owners. They were not generally adopted for several centuries, and not mandated in Finland until the 1920s.

Our names and surnames seems to have a special meaning. With the cocktail party effect, for example, people who are not deliberately or consciously processing a stream of speech, will notice when their own name is mentioned (Moray, 1959). This is an effect of low-level filtering, will also detect other important words, such as those with a strong emotional charge (Compton, 2003).

Many people understand how difficult is to recall surnames. One problem with names is that they do not activate webs of associations, and so the memories are vulnerable. To counteract this problem, various mnemonic strategies have been tested which involve creating associations with names - for example, thinking of Ms Farmer as one, strong enough to pull a plough. (Yesavage et al., 1983). It would be easier if people's surnames did shape their life (for example someone called Melody who is making music).

This sort of influence can come from first names, last names, and also initials, should those happen to spell anything of meaning. (New Scientist popularized the term `nominative determinism' for this phenomenon). A second way is through other attributes of the name, such as where in the alphabet it falls, how unusual or attractive it is, what letter is begins with, and how it connotes age, class, gender or race.

Perhaps the easiest way that a name could influence is by allowing that person to move to the front of the line. An example could be people whose last names come first in the alphabet, because alphabetical position is often used as an arbitrary way of sequencing people. The creators of multi-authored papers are sequences alphabetically by their surnames, but the readers mostly remember first of those names. It causes that those people are more likely to be tenured at top departments, to be fellows of the Econometric Society, and, perhaps even to win the Nobel Memorial Prize (Einav & Yariv, 2006). When early named person would be injured, medical stuff will also receive four minutes more attention in discussion about them (Singh et al., 2006).

We can not done much about alphabetical position of our surnames, but our parents could control characteristics of child name, including how unusual it is. Names can be rare because they have drifted out of fashion, such as Ethelred (it was used a centuries ago), because they are spelled in uncommon ways, such as Catelin (spelled so many ways it is hard to know what is standard), or because they are simply made up, such as Gra2T. The idea of psychiatric disturbance resulting from odd names goes back at least to Kraepelin (1909), but has also been investigated with Harvard undergraduates, who are more likely to flunk out with rare names (Savage & Wells, 1948), and with psychiatric samples, where those with rare names show more severe emotional disturbance (Ellis & Beechley, 1954).

In general, girls' names are more varied than boys' names. It may be that gender differences in naming reflect different roles, even now, that parents have for their sons and daughters (Rossi, 1975). By avoiding the most common and old-fashioned names, parents may enhance their daughters' claims to be young. In choosing more common and historically popular names for their boys, parents may signal that their sons are mature and established.

Names could be signal of race too. Kristen and Anne are white, while Latonya and Keisha are black; Brad and Jay white, Darnell and Jamal black When resumes were mailed out in response to job postings, with typical black and white names randomly assigned to resumes of various sorts, the black-named applicants got 33 per cent fewer responses, even from self-described equal opportunity employers (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004).

There is some evidence that people's initials influence their choices. We are most preferring things that names starts from the same letter like us. Perhaps, Peter prefers Pepsi (Hodson & Olson, 2005). It could lead us to punishment too, for example people whose names starts with C or D, are more likely to get those grades. People, whose initials spell out nasty things, such as DIE more often are committing suicide, than those whose initials spell out nothing, and especially more than those, who have initials such as WIN (Christenfeld et al., 1999).

Goes back to whole names, Louis will tend to live in St. Louis, and Mary in Marysville (Pelham et al., 2003).

The challenging confounds in research on the impact of names, with name-givers generally are very close to their children and , it seems that the names do shape, in some ways, the fate of their bearers.

Words:

seem instead - odnosić wrażenie

coming-of-age ceremony - rytuał inicjacyjny

research - badanie

upbringing - wychowanie

sufficiently - znaczenie

facilitate - ułatwiać

mandate - obowiązkowe

cocktail party effect - efekt przyjęcia

charge - ładunek

vulnerable -

plough - pług

invole -

connotes - konotuje

arbitrary - arbitralny

tenured -

disturbance - zaburzenie

undergraduates - student

flunk out - odpaść, wylecieć

severe - skrajne

varied - zróżnicowane

established - ustabilizowany

spell out - znaczyć, rozumieć

confounds - utrudniać

bearer - właściciel, posiadacz (???)

---