Are you about to give your child the single most beautiful name that nobody's ever thought of before? Stop. Don't do it. New research by University of Florida economist David Figlio shows that a person's name can have a serious impact on the direction of his or her life. Figlio looked at female names and gave them each a linguistic "femininity" score by using 1,700 letter and sound combinations that could be associated with one gender or the other. He then examined 1,000 pairs of sisters to determine the paths of girls with more and less feminine names. Figlio found that girls with more feminine names like Isabella were significantly less likely to study math or physics after age 16 than girls with less feminine names, such as Alex. He also found that children with names associated with lower socioeconomic status scored three to five percentage points lower on exams than siblings with more traditional names. Additional research by UCLA psychologist Albert Mehrabian showed that people hold traditional names in high esteem. "A name is part of an impression package," Mehrabian told the Guardian. "Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish."
• SEED Magazine
posted by Parijata Mackey @ 11:52 PM
2 Comments:
I'm naming my kids Alexander, Thomas, Michaelangelo, and Christopher, regardless of their gender. They can go by Alex, Tom, Mike, and Chris, which would also be extremely weird if they were girls...
Um, that doesn't mean that I must have four children. That doesn't mean anything. Oh God, four kids. What was I thinking...
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