Word: namee
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...Shel Silverstein-penned Johnny Cash hit "A Boy Named Sue," a father explains that he gave his son so improbable a name because "I knew you'd have to get tough or die, and it's that name that helped to make you strong." It turns out that your first name may also help make you a criminal...
...short answer is that our names play an important role in shaping the way we see ourselves - and, more important, how others see us. Abundant academic literature proves these points. A 1993 paper found that most people perceive those with unconventionally spelled names (Patric, Geoffrey) as less likely to be moral, warm and successful. A 2001 paper found that we have a tendency to judge boys' trustworthiness and masculinity from their names. (As a guy whose middle name is Ashley, I can attest to the second part.) In a 2007 paper (here's a PDF), University of Florida economist David...
...first names also say a great deal about the extent of privilege enjoyed by the people who picked those names for us, our parents. In the new paper, Kalist and Lee point out that previous research has shown that the name Allison is rarely given to girls whose mothers didn't finish high school but is frequently given to girls whose mothers have 17 years or more of schooling. On average, parents with less schooling are likelier to pick unpopular names for their kids. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens...
...define unpopular? For their study, Kalist and Lee accumulated all 15,012 names given to the boys born in one large state between 1987 and 1991. (To get the boys' names, the authors had to agree not to reveal the state's name.) The researchers developed an equation that gave the most popular name of the period, Michael, a score of 100. The name David got a 50. Ernest, Preston, Tyrell, Kareem, Malcolm, Alec were each given a 1. Kalist and Lee theorized that the boys with the lower-scoring names might commit more delinquent acts...
Which is exactly what they found. The relationship is quite predictable and linear: if you pick a name that's 10% more popular than Ernest (Maxwell is the example that Kalist gave me), the population of Maxwells will have 3.7% fewer delinquents than the population of Ernests. Pretty neat, right...