Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff. Lauren vog Obam here with a classic episode from our former host, Christian Sader. This is one where the research really surprised us, the topic does your name determine your future? Hey brain Stuff? This is Christian Sager. Everyone has a name. I just gave you mine. That's extraordinary though, when you think about it, because it's one of the very few social things that all human beings
have in common. No matter who you are, where you live, or what you do with your life, you and everyone else has a name. You might be a Kevin, a Felicia, a Mohammed, a Holly, and so on. It's part of your identity and helps separate you from the teeming mass of humanity. But how much does your name affect you? Could it determine your future? Well, it doesn't determine your life exactly. Economists Steve Levitt and Roland Friar studied decades worth of children's names, only to find that what your
parents name you doesn't really impact your economic future. So you're not doomed to poverty just because your name is Earnest or something. But your name will certainly affect your future. A study called are You Ready? Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal unearthed at least one disturbing trend about names. Job applicants with equal qualifications or even otherwise identical resumes are about fifty more likely to get a callback if they have a white sounding name.
This indicates that despite numerous laws, discrimination still thrives in the workplace. Your name doesn't just tell people about you. It tells people about your parents and gives them away to place you in their vision of society. This isn't about whether their vision is correct. That's prejudice, but it does affect how people with these expectations in mindsets will address and interact with you. And that's not all. Your
name may also play a role in your career. This theory is called nominative determinism, the idea that your name may affect the way you interact with the world, including anything from donations to your choice of career. For example, is someone named Helen Painter more likely to be an artist? Or is someone named Jimmy Hogg more likely to work with pigs? Matthew Meirenberg and John Jones think so in
their study and here we go with another name. Why Susie sells Seashells by the Sea Shore, Implicit egotism and Major Life Decisions classic academic title. These researchers found that people are more likely to choose careers whose labels resemble their own names. So, to use one of their examples, people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among can you
guess it Yeah dentists. Dentists Dennis, Denise, Mehrenberg, and Jones believe this happens because people prefer things that they connect with themselves, including their own names. Other scientists, like University of Pennsylvania's Urie Simonson, are skeptical about this whole idea. Are we drawing tenuous conclusions where none exists just to
support a neat idea? Well, for the record, Simonson does suppose that nominative determinism might explain why people named Rachel might be more likely to donate in the wake of Hurricane Rhea, because as weird as this might sound, that similarity just starting with the letter are triggered some sense of identification. We haven't even talked about name changes or the weird name changes people have tried in court. I'm looking at you, Romanico, Sir Tasty Maximilian, Yeah, that is
his real name. We haven't talked about all the multi generational popularity cycle they experience either, or, as we like to call it, the rise and fall of the Brittany's and ash Leaves. Today's episode was written by Ben Bolan and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet,
how stuff Works dot com. Plus for more podcasts for my heart radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.