By Neil Street
A recent story in the Huffington Post reported on a study of baby names that found kids whose names
started with the letter "A" did better in school, and in college, than kids whose names did not.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is just some mumbo-jumbo quackery,
or maybe someone trying to get some attention by coming up with a headline meant to grab the reader.
You'd be wrong. The study was done by researchers from U. C. San Diego and Yale University – and
the authors stand by their findings!
What they found, and claim to be statistically
solid, is that people subconsciously perform and act in ways that echo the first letter of their names.
So A and B names do better academically, by getting A's and B's, while C & D people do slightly worse.
Apparently, when it comes to grades, this theory only applies to people with initials A – F.
But in other areas the researchers also found that the initial letter of a
name plays a powerful, if subconscious role. "A" people tend to be attracted to other "A"s. "T" people,
in turn, might be disproportionate buyers of Toyotas, tomatoes, and truffles. "J" people might love Japanese
food, the scent of jasmine, and the months of June and July.
In perhaps the most
intriguing section of their report, the social scientists found that baseball players whose names began
with "K" struck out at bat more frequently than players with any other initials by more than a 1.5% difference.
That may not sound like much (it didn't to me) but the authors of the study (and remember, this is Yale
we're talking about) were adamant that it is statistically significant. They looked at batting data over the
past 100 years, which provides the statistical validation.
So why should batters
whose names start with "K" strike out more often? If you know your baseball, you probably already know the
answer to that one. In the shorthand developed for baseball scorecards, the letter "K" stands for a strike.
So without being aware of it, the poor "K" batters go out to bat already handicapped, because their
"K" name subliminally predisposes them to striking out.
It's hard to accept
that something as innocuous as your first initial can impact so much. It doesn't seem fair! But it's actually
just one of several schools of thought that suggest unimagined power in first names. Historically, the hidden power
of names has been a key doctrine among different cultures and religions, in some cases going back thousands
of years.
The Book of Proverbs states that "a good name is to be chosen rather than
great riches." (Proverbs 22:1). Early Christians and Jews believed that names had great spiritual power and
meaning. According to the ancient Jewish Kabbalah system of beliefs, based in part on numerology, a person's name provides
key insights into their character and life path. Other religions and belief systems hold that names are potent,
powerful forces in how our lives unfold. Much of this belief tends to be dismissed in today's world, until you come across something like
the surprising study from Yale and U. C. San Diego.
The authors of that study are hardly
alone, even in our modern, cynical era. Another recent study, this time out of the School of Business
at Arizona State University, found that top CEO's in Phoenix came from a surprisingly small pool of names,
implying that your name can have a big bearing on future success. (The "success" names, according to this
ASU study, are Robert, John, and Steven).
Can we give much credibility to these sort of
claims? After all, our culture today is awash with names of every kind, from the traditional to the completely
bizarre. Some of the most successful people have the strangest names! But the profusion of names may simply be
masking a more basic truth. Perhaps names do, in some strange way, help create our destinies. In the end, each person must decide
for themselves.
.
About the Author
Neil Street is a web publisher and blogger who writes frequently about the meaning of names and name numerology.
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The above guest post is published based on the premise that it will be helpful and informative.
The opinions made within it are those of the author and not of sunnyray.org. The links you may find within
this post do not necessarily imply our recommendation or endorsement of the views expressed within them.
