Your name is the mirror to your life choices. There is evidence to prove it

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

Shakespeare . Romeo and Juliett

The Bard’s famous quote might have become part of pop culture, finding its way to coffee mugs, T-shirts and greeting cards.

But ask those in the business of analysing people’s names scientifically - onomastics, as it is known officially – and the answer will come as a surprise.

Names, according to experts, are the beginning of people’s identities and stay as “a symbol of the self” throughout every individual’s life, signifying who they are or what ethnic or religious background they belong to.

But they could also be the reason for racist bias, especially in the US and Europe.

If you have an Arab-sounding name, you might have fewer chances of landing a job in the US or Europe than someone with a Western-sounding name, according to a study titled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?”

The study by two economists – Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan – tested their theory that names can decide people’s job prospects in Chicago and Boston due to discrimination in the labour market.

The economists created five thousand resumes with White-sounding and Black-sounding names. They also packed these resumes with different qualifications - one with more experience, skills and capabilities and the other with poor qualifications - and shared them with respective employers who had posted ads in different publications.

Despite having more qualifications and experience, a resume of a Black-sounding name did poorly compared to White-sounding names, who received 50 percent more response.

“Based on our estimates, a White name yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience. Since applicants’ names are randomly assigned, this gap can only be attributed to name manipulation,” the economists wrote.

In a big political picture, this might also say a lot about the continuing economic and political gaps between developed states and underdeveloped countries with colonised and colonial backgrounds.

While this study clearly demonstrated the financial results of a moniker, names have impacts on people’s lives well beyond the borders of the business world, experts say.

"Because a name is used to identify an individual and communicate with the individual on a daily basis, it serves as the very basis of one's self-conception, especially in relation to others," said David Zhu, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, who focuses on the psychological reasons of names.

A rare name might be one of the causes of unfavourability, leading to feelings of isolation, or a name might be a reason why someone commits a crime.

Why, a name might even decrease the chances of finding a life partner, according to various studies.

Different theories have been developed to explain the why and how of this phenomenon.

Nominative determinism

Nominative determinism, which means name-driven outcome, stands taller among all the theories.

In English, there are other words like euonym and aptronym to describe the situation where a name is “well suited to the person, place, or thing named.”

According to nominative determinism, which was first coined by CR Cavonius – who is not a scholar but an ordinary reader of the journal New Scientist – names have a clear impact on the kind of occupation and work people like to get.

A common reference for this thinking is the surnames of the two authors, AJ Splatt and D Weedon, who co-authored an article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology.

Jen Hunt, a psychologist, found that “authors tend to gravitate toward the area of research that fits their surname”, referring to Splatt and Weedon.

Interestingly, Hunt wrote this in an article titled The Psychology of Reference Hunting, in a clear reference to nominative determinism. “Perhaps this explains why I have written this article. Happy hunting!” she ended her article.

There are plenty of examples of nominative determinism.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, strongly emphasised the importance of joy in life. And he fits into this jigsaw puzzle perfectly as his last name refers to “a person of a cheerful disposition”.

Carl Gustav Jung, a leading psychologist and one-time student of Freud, was also a great subscriber to this idea, later called nominative determinism.

"Herr Freud (Joy) champions the pleasure principle, Herr (Alfred) Adler (Eagle) the will to power, Herr Jung (Young) the idea of rebirth ..." he wrote in his book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.

Implicit egotism

However, other scholars oppose the mysterious sources of nominative determinism.

Instead, they point towards the hypothesis of implicit egotism, which says that people have unconscious tendencies to make choices related to their personality.

Uri Simonsohn, a psychologist, argued in an article that “because of implicit egotism—the subconscious attraction to targets connected with the self—people disproportionately choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own.”

According to Simonsohn, scholars do not need to seek complicated evidence to prove nominative determinism. Instead, they should take into consideration simple reasons for a man to get married to a woman who has a last name or ancestry similar to his. Or someone might tend to move to a place because it simply sounds similar to his or her name, he wrote.

“The evidence of implicit egotism from the laboratory is both abundant and convincing. It started with the demonstration of the name–letter effect, consisting of the observation that people like letters contained in their name more than other people do,” he wrote, referring to a finding that people likely tend to establish ties with people, locations and brands which have similar letters to their names.

Jesse Singal, an author and investigative journalist, recently put the matter in perspective.

“Eventually, the idea that names predict not just occupations but also other life outcomes received full-blown charts-and-graphs scientific treatment,” Singal wrote.