Why Your Name Matters

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/12/why-your-name-matters.html

by dsr12 • 13 years ago

49 58 13 years ago

bsirkia2• 13 years ago

Whenever I read about this, I wonder at what point it's worth changing your name. Your name is kind of a weird thing, even though it seems like such an ingrained part of you, you can legally change it to something that would freakonomically make you better off.

ars_technician• 13 years ago

I think the name is just a correlation, not a causation. To put it bluntly, you won't fail because your name is "London", you will probably fail because you grew up with a parent that thought London was a good name for a person.

Changing your name is just hiding the symptom, not the cause.

jaytaylor• 13 years ago

Even still, might it be worth it to change ones name if it makes a measurable improvement in the odds?

stevewillows• 13 years ago

Further to this, it would be important to include the names of siblings and parents along with their career paths. Someone who names their kid 'Orangejello' (pronounced: or-onj-ello) may not teach their kids the same things as someone who names their kid 'Tom'.

ttuominen• 13 years ago

According to the article, that's just part of it. They specifically pointed out cases where identical resumes with different names yielded different outcomes. (Where the names had strong associations with different ethnic backgrounds.) Now, statistically, different ethnic backgrounds will have an effect on people's lives, but for an individual, the parent's question might still be relevant.

im3w1l2• 13 years ago

I think only 3 people in the world share my first/last name combination. One of them has been convicted for possesion of child porn.

That's especially funny due to my interest in cryptography, and counter surveillance.

I have considered changing my name, but I am undecided. Advice?

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

Alternatively: you've got great cover for illicit activities. "It wasn't me, but someone else with the same name."

Though honestly, given the state of bureaucratic snafus, changing it might be wise.

mturmon• 13 years ago

A testimonial from a HN'er who did a name change for various reasons revolving around removing friction: http://www.flownet.com/ron/eg-rg-faq.html

yummyfajitas• 13 years ago

I answered to an Indianized version of my name (Chris -> Krish, Krishna) when I lived there. A standard name just makes life simpler.

kintamanimatt• 13 years ago

The only thing that really matters about your name is how you feel about it. If you cringe every time you hear it, or it somehow makes you unhappy, its probably time to change it. Hopefully you're a citizen of a country that readily permits such a thing.

The only time it'd be good to change your name for professional reasons is if you're coincidentally an investment banker called Bernard Madoff, but even then that could possibly be worked in your favor.

pedalpete• 13 years ago

Does the authors comment "are so many doctor Dans simply because Dan is a common name", not opposed to the methodology used "men with unusual names, the study found, were more likely to have flunked out or to have exhibited symptoms of psychological neurosis than those with more common names."

In the first study, they weren't looking at the number of "Doctor Dans", they were looking at a subset of people and placing them all along a graph and watching for trends in performance not based on a name, but based on the popularity of the name. These strike me as different things, but I'm no expert in these (or any) type of study.

Whitespace• 13 years ago

Somewhat tangentially related, the company I work for was recently acquired by a very large corporation with 30,000+ employees. They auto-generated login and email addresses for everyone in my company, using the following schema (my legal name is Thomas Takashi Clark, but I go by Tom Clark):

- tclark - ttclark - thclark - thoclark - thomclark - etc.

The first ones being already taken, I got "thoclark" as my login. I'm not sure why, but I became extremely upset at this, almost as if I was having an anxiety attack. I think the reason was that in no way, shape or form did I view "thoclark" as my personal identity, and for someone to assert that "tho" was me was akin to being charged with a crime I didn't commit. I wasn't comfortable with the thought of having to type that in multiple times per day, and I definitely wasn't comfortable telling others what my new professional email was.

They changed it to tomclark after a lot of pleading, but I'm curious as to why I had became so upset. I think the whole process would have been a lot better if I had the opportunity to choose my own login/email instead of someone saying, "hey, this is you now!"

Has anyone here had such a reaction before?

im3w1l2• 13 years ago

Transsexuals come to mind.

jsmeaton2• 13 years ago

Yes - I've had a similar reaction but not quite as extreme. Before we were acquired, my domain name was smeatonj (self chosen). After, it was changed to jsmeaton, and it really really frustrated me. Worse, was that I had to use my domain name as my email address instead of my first name.

I know it shouldn't really matter, but it did.

tseabrooks2• 13 years ago

I can't help but notice that you self identify as "jsmeaton" on HN. The name you didn't like, or choose, initially.

What happens over time to change how we perceive ourselves?

sedev• 13 years ago

I've had that experience: the logins that get automatically assigned at the Big Enterprise Company where I work, are sometimes nonsensical. I've seen some coworkers with just surname@example.com, but many more with an arbitrary combination of their given name and surname. The hash they made of my legal name was to my eyes ugly, and it didn't help that it's difficult to speak. I also have a lot of coworkers whose backgrounds are in Asia or the Indian subcontinent, and I can't imagine they're happier about their names getting mangled.

yen2232• 13 years ago

As a Chinese guy, we are used to having our names mangled, because our family name comes first. Any site that requires a "first" name and a "last" name will almost always display our names backwards. Ex: If your name is Lee Kuan Yew, your name will usually be rendered as "Kuan Yew Lee".

A good example of this is noted director Ang Lee - whose real name should be Lee Ang.

Indians also face name issues, mostly because of the length. 20-30 character names are not uncommon.

(Also, the Indian subcontinent is part of Asia.)

21122013• 13 years ago

I worked at a company that was acquired by Yahoo several years ago. They actually gave us a choice of user names. Each employee sent in a list of names. I was lucky enough to get my first choice.

daurnimator• 13 years ago

I had a similar thing when signing up for my universities email system. Somehow managed to become the most important thing during enrollment to me. Luckily only took a couple of emails to tech department to get it changed.

hownottowrite• 13 years ago

Sure. My given name is James but I go by Jamie. However, the common familiar of James is Jim. Yet, calling me Jim is a fast path to a punch in face. It shouldn't be a big deal but I suspect that the fact that my father's name is Tim has a lot to do with the reaction as we do not have a good relationship.

CraigJPerry• 13 years ago

David Campbell (who probably reads HN) has used the email "campbed" for years. I assume he likes it!

amenod• 13 years ago

There is an aspect that the article doesn't present sufficiently - why do people have their name? Do they perform differently because of the name or is their name a consequence of something that altered their behavior?

For instance, if some immigrant is willing to change his name (as stated in article) he would probably be willing to make other things that would make him blend better into the new society, which could mean he was earning more. In this case name change is just a symptom, not the cause.

girvo• 13 years ago

The very end of article haphazardly try to point that effect out. It's a signal for other important things rather than something that has an effect directly.

hrvbr• 13 years ago

Most social sites require a unique name, for no reason other than a technical convenience. Maybe this practice of making all names rare can have a negative effect on people.

yetanotherphd• 13 years ago

I really don't like these Resume studies where they send out a bunch of resumes with different names.

A resume can be an extremely noisy signal, and the best statistical signal might be the ethnicity implicit in the name. When you actually meet the person, you get a lot more information, and the employer might rely less on the person's race as a source of information/bias.

lemonberry• 13 years ago

Isn't that the point though? If you have a certain type of name you never get to meet the potential employer in person.

route66• 13 years ago

Your own reply proves them very descriptive and close to reality: If ethnicity is interpreted by the reader as the best statistical signal (which conveys the bias of the reader, not of the resume) the "... actually meet the person... " is not going to happen. Reducing this to an information density problem explains nothing. Why do yo really don't like them?

walshemj3• 13 years ago

Yes the study is hows the effect of class, race and religious tradition effect recruitment not the name in its self.

morgante• 13 years ago

Interesting article, especially since I always assumed that having an uncommon name is beneficial. I'm "morgante" virtually everywhere and people tend to remember my name pretty easily. There has to be some benefit to that.

On the other hand, it definitely seems like we could be looking at an instance of correlation. My educated, left-wing parents chose a fairly unusual name and that also reflects how they raise me. So it's hard to disassociate any of my name from my upbringing in deciding any impact on life outcomes. Probably the best studies in this are the ones comparing siblings, but even those are susceptible to third variables (perhaps second children are more likely to get a common name, and are certainly raised differently).

Tomte2• 13 years ago

The worst I have seen was at a former employer.

We had two people with the name "John Doe", and the mail scheme at the company resulted in john.doe@company.invalid.

The second one got... john.doe1@company.invalid

StavrosK4• 13 years ago

Hmm, why is that a problem? I don't get it.

ajuc• 13 years ago

I worked in company where the naming scheme was jodoe, j2doe, j3doe, ... We had a coleegue that worked in that company, moved to another, then the companies merged, and he was j2doe because he for some reson was forbidden to use his previous login. We also had logins like j8smith for the more popular surnames. Nobody cared.

mrhlee• 13 years ago

Perhaps it'd be better to have john.doe1 and john.doe2, since someone who wasn't aware yet of the numbering convention may be confused by who used john.doe1. Or, they make a typo by leaving out the number and it goes to the wrong recipient.

Tomte2• 13 years ago

People have names. I find that digit in the mail address that clearly consists of a name deeply degrading.

There are other ways to solve collisions: j.doe@, j_doe@, maybew one of those has a second given name, whatever.

wink• 13 years ago

Wasn't there a similar study either in Freakonomics or Super Freakonomics? IIRC they boiled it down to level of education and how well the the children with uncommon names were doing. Of course it had anecdata of two brothers named Winner Doe/Jones/etc and Loser Doe/Jones/etc.

judk• 13 years ago

It was in the original book, and after the book sold millions of copies they walked back their exaggerated claims.

ExpiredLink• 13 years ago

A rare name, the professors surmised, had a negative psychological effect on its bearer.

No, no, no! Because correlation is not causation. Period. The prevailing social science nowadays isn't psychology but pseudology.

kevincennis• 13 years ago

That's referring to a 1948 study though. The author is just providing background and setting the stage. It's not the research that the article is actually about.

Hardly seems worth getting upset over.

hbags• 13 years ago

Many readers on this site love to attack research by reading an article about the research or reading just the abstract, and then assuming that the researcher was slightly dumber than algae. This is just another example of that particular blend of arrogance and ignorance.

collyw• 13 years ago

My theory behind this, which the article doesn't touch on, is that maybe alternative lifestyle parents are far more likely to go for unusual names (I know a few "hippy" parents myself, and their kids are more likely to have less common names, "River" or "India" being two I know off the top of my head). These same people are less likely to push the child in traditional directions - study hard, work hard, good job, head down. They are far more likely to let their child grow up in a less pressured way.

Anyway, that's just my personal observation from hanging out with friends with less conventional lifestyles over the years.

(My other theory would be that the kids raised in less conventional ways, would be more likely to follow their passions, and enjoy their work, rather than becoming a corporate lawyer or accountant. Probably have less mental breakdowns or mid-life crises, but this is all speculation on my part).

gaius• 13 years ago

Also on the front page of HN right now: Buckminster Fuller.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6943883

cafard• 13 years ago

Buckminster is a good old New England last name; a Joseph Buckminster gave the Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard in 1802 (see Adams's history of the US 1800-1816). I can't imagine that Fuller's first name hindered him any more than (say) Kingman Brewster's hindered him.

pessimizer• 13 years ago

Your name matters in the US because if you sound (or look) like you're black, white people won't hire you, or listen to you, really, as much as your white peers. They'll see your work as worse than your peers' work when they are equivalent. You have to be the best of all your peers in order not to be the first to be laid off, because your pain and discomfort is less intelligible to your bosses than your coworkers' pain and discomfort.

As a Jamal, I've found it pretty effective to use young white men as a proxy to push projects in the direction that I think they should go in. White kids fresh out of college (at least of late, maybe past 5-10 years) seem to be less racist than their older peers, and really impressed that you're older and you know a lot of stuff.

Sadly, I think that this generation's freshly graduated white kids are less racist simply because they have had less direct experience of black people than their parents and grandparents, who moved as far from black people as they possibly could. A professionally intimidating black person (because I have 15 years experience and they have 5, not because I'm that good:)) as a living, breathing reality in front of them is a fascinating novelty that they have no idea how to react to. They may rap at you sometimes, though. Ugh.

This article gets a bit bogged down in the "name" aspect of the thing, though. Race is a cultural construction designed to rationalize outgroup discrimination, and consists of a bunch of markers that people use to determine which group you should be placed in, and therefore how you should be treated. A name doesn't have to be "Da'Quan," "Monique Washington" will work as well.

lisper3• 13 years ago

white people won't hire you, or listen to you

Some white people. Not all white people. The qualifier is important. With it, it's a true statement. Without it, it's a racist slur.

walshemj3• 13 years ago

yeah right there's enough studies showing that identical CVs with ethnic names get discriminated to make your point moot - I am a middle class white and i can see that.

tseabrooks2• 13 years ago

It's a bit more complicated than this. I think you start hitting on the reality towards the end but get detoured by racism in the beginning.

It's all about tribal identification. I don't mean tribes in the historical sense but more akin to Godin's idea of tribes. They're the people you identify with. It's pretty well established that people like people like themselves. This isn't really that crazy. It's easy to see that liking people like yourself isn't the same as hating people that are different, it does often mean you don't respond as warmly though.

Names, just like race, is just one marker, as you described it, that defines what tribe we belong to. We are all in the business of quickly assessing the situation and placing people into tribes mentally, probably unconsciously, as soon as we meet them and we will adjust our perception as we learn more about them, of course.

The point of these rambling paragraphs is that I don't think this is the same as racism, though it certainly can become racism when taken to the extreme. A good example is our friend groups. If we like a certain music, a certain type of game (DnD) then you're likely to end up in a friend group with a very similar set of interests.

This gets expanded to the work place in an interesting way. Lots of hip trendy employers say things like, "We wanted to build a company we loved coming to everyday". Well, in order to love being at the office every day you're going to have to like the people. Does this mean they have to be perfect matches for someone you'd place in your friend group, in your tribe? No. But it does mean they're going to have to match on some of those markers.

Companies talk about "cultural fit" when hiring, hell it's on the front page here pretty regularly. In my estimation this isn't that far from not hiring people based on race. Instead we're not hiring based on some other set of markers other than race. What we're really talking about is cultural-ism where we discriminate based on particular subcultures, and markers for those subcultures.

I won't argue fairness or anything like that but I do think it's important to explore the ideas that we discriminate against people regularly and only ascribe malice when it's down for racial reasons.

(Not that it should matter but I'm black and I run a team of about 16 people (all white) doing sales/product management/project management/ software development in the South)

summerdown2• 13 years ago

I once submitted a story to a writing group, where the protagonist was an evil dictator trying to return from hell. Some liked it, some didn't - but one thing made everyone unhappy.

The consensus was I needed to change the name of the main character because "people called Tom can't be mass murderers."

Why Your Name Matters

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