what's in a name

"What's in a name?" Juliet famously asked Romeo, telling him a rose would smell just as sweet even if it were called something else. Is it really true, though? For Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, names were a barrier, so of course they didn't want them to matter. But just as Romeo and Juliet's last names directly affected their love story, the names we are given and go by have an impact in our lives in ways we may scarcely be aware of.

Research from around the world shows that what people call us can influence what others think of us, and what personality traits we develop, and even what big life decisions we make for ourselves. That's not to say you can direct someone's life entirely by giving them a certain name, but there are some things prospective parents who are weighing baby name options might want to consider.

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Certain names come with certain stereotypes

Our names influence how people see us, for better or for worse.

I have no hard evidence, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that very few babies born in the 2020s will be named Karen, solely because of the get-me-the-manager stereotype that's been attached to the name. The name Chad may have met a similar fate for this generation of baby boys, but there will undoubtedly be other names that get taken down by popular culture.

Fair or not, certain names conjure up certain stereotypes. Psychologist Michael Varnum, PhD, shared some results from a 2018 study of 400 Americans that examined how certain names are perceived based on traits like warmth and competence. For example:

Elizabeth = seen as high in both warmth and competence

Misty = seen as low in both warmth and competence

Riley = seen as high in warmth, low in competence

Ruth = seen as low in warmth, high in competence

Names even come with physical stereotypes, and a 2017 study from Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that people can guess what a person's name is based solely on how they look with much more accuracy than mere chance.

Names affect how people perceive us.Photo credit: Canva

Our names might influence decisions we make

If your name is Dennis, are you more likely to be dentist than someone named Josh? If your name is Kelly, would you be more likely to donate Hurricane Katrina victims than someone named Molly?

Oddly enough, research basically says yes. In the aggregate, people tend to make decisions about their lives that align with the first letter of their name. Study results indicate that to move to states that resemble their names, choose careers that begin with the first letter of their name, choose brand names that share phonetic qualities with their own names, choose romantic partners that have similar last names, contribute to politicians with names that start with the same letter as their own name, etc.

Yes, one study even found that people whose names shared an initial with a hurricane name were more likely to donate to that hurricane's disaster relief efforts than others.

Again, these study findings are in aggregate, so we can't draw any individual conclusions based on any individual's name, but those findings indicate that names do make a difference.

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Our names can reveal our cultural identities

If you see the names Jerry, Juan, Jakob, Jayvon, and Jahan, you likely picture a different ethnicity or race or cultural identity for each one. Names are cultural, there's no question about it, and that reality can mean different things in different contexts.

There's the famous research showing that resumes with "white-sounding" names were more likely to be called for interviews over resumes with non-white names, despite have the exact same qualifications. So our names being associated with cultural or racial identities can result in discrimination when people's prejudices, whether conscious or unconscious, get in the way.

But race and ethnicity aren't the only cultural elements our names can reveal. Whether you have a traditional name or a unique name can reveal information about your family culture, such as whether or not your family or your community are more or less individualistic. Research shows that more unique names are more common among regions of the U.S. that were more recently part of the frontier, and that countries that are more individualistic tend to have more uncommon names. So even if your name is something your parents conjured out of thin air, it may not be as hard as you might think to narrow down some cultural information about you based just on your unique name.

Does it really matter what your name is?Photo credit: Canva

It matters whether you like your name or not

One of the most interesting, though perhaps not surprising, findings in studies on names is that people who don't like their names tend to be less psychologically well-adjusted than those who like their names. Since our names are attached to our identities in a direct way, dissatisfaction with one's name would logically correlate with negative feelings about oneself and vice versa.

But it doesn't take an official study to know that going through life with a name you don't like would just stink. Thankfully, our names aren't written in stone. I've known several people who have changed their name in adulthood, deciding they were done being called a name that didn't suit them for whatever reason.

There's no way to predict what the next "Karen" will be or to know whether a child will actually like the name they're given or not, so parents must strike a balance between being thoughtful about naming a child and being overly anxious about getting it wrong. In the end, if a name turns out to be a poor choice, it can always be changed. Life's too short to fret over a name, and it's also too short to keep one you hate.