Our name determines how others perceive us and what our profession will be (this is what some research guarantees)

Tell us your name and science will tell you what your future will look like. At least that is what certain studies that evaluated how names are able to influence people’s lives, contributing, for example, to determine where they will live and what profession they will follow. Scientists also say that the favorite letter of each person is, almost always, among the first of their name.

O awesome.club wants to share with you all the details these studies uncovered and how these assessments are made.

Psychologists Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg and John Jones, from the University of New York, in the United States, analyzed 10 studies (such as those from the Yellow Pages, GeoRef, the American Dental Association and the American Bar Association), in which they verified whether there was a some kind of correlation between people’s names and different aspects of their lives, such as the location of their homes and their occupations.

In the research entitled Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life DecisionsPelham expounded on a theory known as the “name-letter effect,” a phenomenon in which people tend to select the first few letters of their names to choose important aspects of their lives.

This is the case, for example, with girls named Denise: Pelham found that many of them are dentists. (dentist, in English). Another example is that of women named Laura, who often become lawyers (from lawyerlawyer in English).

In psychology, there is a theory called implicit egotism, which explains how people’s lives revolve around themselves. It is an unconscious process in which we make positive associations based on our world – a typical example is precisely the choices made based on the name. Those who have “saints” names, like Luís, Paulo, Marcos or João will probably tend to live in cities like São Paulo or São Luís, for example — of course, this is just a trend, not something definitive or decisive.

Pelham also looked at the effect of birthdays on people. And what he found is blunt: for example, those who were born in February, or on the 2nd of any month, are likely to live at an address that has the “2” in it, whether it be the number of the house, building or apartment.

This is not the first study that has analyzed the influence of names on people’s lives. Another work, carried out by researchers from the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (both in Israel), HEC Paris (France) and Columbia University (USA), analyzed a hypothesis that guarantees that stereotypes of names tend to be reflected in the way we perceive faces.

That is, we expect the names to meet our expectations of what people look like. For example, a girl named Maria is generally considered, by common sense, to be a kind and upright person, while a girl named Catherine (or Katarina or Catarina) tends to be perceived as more serious than someone named Bonnie.

The two surveys revealed the effect names have on decision making and how people imagine someone’s physical traits based on their names. Of course, these reactions and decisions (which, interestingly, are often related to their names) usually occur unconsciously.

However, this does not mean that they are irrational, but that people are simply acting egocentrically, that is, completely based on themselves or on popular beliefs.

What is your name? Are your favorite lyrics included in it? Tell our team everything in the comments!