How Your Name Influences Your Success

By Rachel Belle

 

Listen to How Your Name Might Have Influenced Your Success

Every single person reading this had a parent who chose their specific name for a specific reason. But how much do parents think about how that name will influence their child’s future?

Northwestern University professor, David Figlio, has broken down millions of names, and then analyzed them, to look for patterns and eventually see how they affect kids in school.

“Teachers are more likely to recommend kids, who have lower status names, to be learning disabled and are less likely to call those kids gifted. Over time those kids end up doing worse and worse in school.”

By lower status, he means names given by high school dropouts or those with a lower socio-economic status.

“The higher the Scrabble score of the name, imagine the exotic consonants: X, J, Q, K, Z. It’s extremely rare for college graduates to give a child a name with two high point letters. High school drop-outs are 30 times more likely to give a kid a name with two high Scrabble point consonants. For example, the name ‘Alexander.’ A parent who is a high school drop-out is dramatically more likely to spell that name Alexzander. So the x/z combination in the middle of the name.”

Another example lies in names that are more popular with African American girls; names that start with ‘Sha’ ‘La’ or ‘Ta.’

“So the prefix ‘La’ is considerably more likely to be given by moms who have college degrees. As opposed to ‘Ta’ which is less likely, and then ‘Sha,’ less likely still.”

So, according to Figlio’s statistics, Latoya is a higher status name than say, Sharonda, which means Latoya might be given more opportunities by teachers.

For girls, Figlio says the femininity of a name factors into what she might study.

“The more feminine a girls name, the more likely she was to shy away from advanced math and science classes and the more likely she was to favor advanced English, humanities, language classes. I was finding that a sister named Morgan was twice as likely to favor AP chemistry and physics, than her sister named Isabella.”

Elizabeth and Rebecca are other more statistically feminine names, compared to Anne or Jordan which are more androgynous.

Now, on to boys names. Figlio confirms what we all pretty much know: a boy named Sue is gonna take a lot of heat.

“Boys with names that are typically given to girls: Ashley, Shannon, Jamie, Courtney. When he hits middle school, that’s when those kids tend to behave worse and worse and worse in school. That’s particularly the case if they happen to be in classes with a girl with the same name. So, a boy named Ashley in the same class with a girl name Ashley…it tends to bring the whole class down. Everyone in the class is misbehaving, getting into trouble at higher levels. Everyone is doing worse on their standardized tests.”

A recent British study shows that one out of five parents regret the name they chose for their child. Some regret the unusual spelling they chose and others thought, for example, that Madison was a unique name. But now there are six Madisons in their kid’s class.

But despite the low status and the hard to spell names, Figlio continues to say: go for it!

“Despite the fact I find very strong evidence that names have consequences for kids, I think parents should give their kids the names that they love. [They should] just be prepared to advocate for their kids. Stand up to the people who are treating them differently and make sure their kids know that their name is wonderful and special.”