The Name Game

This morning Chad sent me an email related to the baby which he stated “OMG, we need to be careful.” At first I was worried thinking it could be something health related to the baby or something obviously scary. However, I was relieved to see the story he had forwarded to me was not nearly as serious as I thought … or so I think. 

Below is the story he sent me from the New York Daily News …

Study: Bad baby name could leave your child sadder, dumber

Being called a name can hurt -- even if it's the name your parents chose for you.

Data gathered from nearly 12,000 adult participants found that a bad first name can not only ruin your self-esteem, but it may actually make you lonelier -- and dumber -- research published in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science shows.

The majority of the 12,000 people who partook in various experiments testing name desirability on the European dating website eDarling, responded that they would actually rather remain single than enter a relationship with someone with an undesirable name.

In one experiment variation, prospective mates were given a possible match's first name, age and location. Since the name and location provided matched with the user's preference every time, the name became the sole factor in the decision to consider or dump a possible date.

In another experiment, researchers tested their theory by sending out 47,000 e-mails without photos to German online daters. Those who whose names carried the greatest "valence" -- or intrinsic attractiveness - such as Alexander, and Charlotte received 102% more profile visits than daters whose names carried the worst valence in that culture, namely, Kevin and Mandy. (Ha Germans hate the names Kevin and Mandy?!)

Daters whose names matched those previously rated by teachers as belonging to "quarrelsome" students were also discriminated against, revealing a definite trend about character assumptions.

"There seems to be prejudice based on name valence [or associations]," says study co-author Wiebke Neberich, previously of the International Max Planck Research School. (Now we know why he looked into this, his name is Wiebke!)

"It's a mostly unconscious process where all the associations we have with a particular name will pop up: from the newspapers, from stories and, of course, from our own history," Neberich said.

The researchers concluded that an "unfortunate" first name may certainly inhibit relationship formation, and may even increase one's likelihood to be smoker.

Could this possibly be true? Can a name really affect my child’s life? Will the name we select make our child lonely, unattractive, sad and/or lacking smarts? I’m not so sure I buy into this belief. However,  if our child reaches the age of 17 and can’t seem to get into college and is lacking in dates I guess we will know that the study is true. If that day comes I guess we will also just have to change their name to something more attractive … say something like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie.