MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
11 July 2007
Name discrimination - results from a study about the unconscious impressions people have about names. Includes an interactive tool you can use to test impressions that people had of your name.
My wife runs into this all the time. For some reason, Tiffany doesn't prepare folks for a hippyish, multi-tattooed-and-pierced, (partially) black woman.
I really dislike my name, but from a pragmatic standpoint, it's pretty strong - short, easy to pronounce in multiple languages, not hugely tied to class or ethnicity (I don't think). I guess the pragmatism, at least, fits my personality.
I'm intrigued by the "femininity index" they've got for the female names. How on earth was that developed?
NAME: Good Name, Classic, Wholesome, Strong
MIDDLE NAME: Good Name, Classic, Formal, Strong
I looked up my brother's names and his first name is strong, wholesome, and natural, while his middle name is strong, wholesome, and classic.
My parents did that on purpose; our family name is either unspellable or unpronounceable (depending on whether you hear it or see it first) so they tried to give us names to which most people would react positively.
The femininity rating is interesting. All bar one of the "most feminine" names end in an a (or an a sound) and none bar one of the "least feminine" names do. Which feels kind of right from a gut perspective POV; I've talked with people about how those particular names seem especially girly. But I wonder how they actually decided that they were the most feminine? survey rankings?
Oooh, the gendered-name issue intensifies. From another paper by David Figlio, who came up with the girly girl names discouraged from science study:
I propose an unusual identification strategy to estimate the effects of disruptive students on peer behavior and academic outcomes. I suggest that boys with names most commonly given to girls may be more prone to misbehavior as they get older. The argument goes as follows: Up until a certain point in childhood, boys with names associated with girls are unaffected by their names, either positively or negatively. But as they enter middle school and (1) become more aware of their own sexuality and (2) are mixed with a new group of children (including those older than they are) who did not attend their elementary school, boys with names associated with girls may begin to misbehave in school at a disproportionate rate. The data bear this out: In the large Florida school district that provided me with the data for this analysis, in elementary school there is no relationship between names and boys’ behavior, but in sixth grade, the first year of middle school, a large gap emerges in behavior between boys with names associated with girls and other boys.
Blog post about the "feminine" names study, pointing out that the sample size was rather small, and that the number of women with masculine (or at least non-feminine) names is rather small, which would probably further skew the results. (The comments are worth reading, too.)
interesting study occhiblu, cool cite. wildly anecdotal data point: the name Ariel for some reason is construed as feminine in the US, but I know of at least one guy with that first name, and he seems pretty well-balanced. the etymology signifies 'lion of God' in Hebrew, and Shakespeare used it for a (fey, yes, but) male character, but most people respond to it as a female name. up until i met this cat at CU, the only 'Ariels' i'd known of were girls.
dude in question is quite masculine, a serious soccer player and cyclist, and in graduate school for physics with a minor in mechanical engineering. He goes by his given name, and doesn't care for diminutives.
I've been using my given name (Elizabeth) more and more over the past few years, not the diminutive (Beth), as i never much cared for that nickname to start with. Seems it's one of the more well-placed ones on the list, anyhow.
I meet a lot of girls with my (real) name. I think it's kinda cute, and confusing, and before I know it, I'm doing cartwheels and Godzilla imitations to get their attention. They look at me funny. I say "We have the same first name!" and they're all like, "No, mine is a Good Name, Refined, Classic, Formal. Yours, while also a Good Name, is Classic, Wholesome, Strong."
And then I'm all, "Baby, that doesn't matter, 'cos neither of us goes by those names, we can just relax and be Above Average together; Informal, Common, Simple." Which sucks, because they fancied themselves Good when in reality they were only Above Average, just like me, and they sneer at me and give me the gasface.
"That's my boyfriend, Maximilian. He's Above Average, Strong, Classic, Complex. Better luck next time, sucker."
And I drop to my knees: "But he's only Above Average. We could be so Good together, baby!"
I'm not sure the graph is that interesting, but I liked reading the comments; they made me feel better about my given name, since I've always been ambivalent about it. It's pretty, but it's ubiquitous, and I've never been sure it really reflected my personality. However, this comment made me feel good:
"I love this name. It brings to mind the word "composure."
One of the things I disliked about my name when I was growing up is that it was so common -- I think three or four girls in my elementary school class also had it -- but I think I've managed to evade its ubiquity by moving. I think it's Germanic/Scandinavian enough to be more popular in the midwest (where I grew up) than in any of the other places I've lived since.
Huh. Both my real name and my screen name poll as "good" and also as "wholesome" and "refined." (One is "classic" and the other is "natural.")
Until recently, people responded to my birth name tellingly: they repeat it with a far-away tone, append a "Miss" to the front of it, and tell me how pretty, how sweet, how old-fashioned it is. In the last few years, the name has skyrocketed in popularity, so no one waxes poetic over it anymore.
A different perspective is voiced in one comment on my birth name: "All the ****s I know are very stuck-up girls." Hee.
Hmm, mine is interestingly split evenly between delicate and strong. I always thought it was just a there type of name or left to interpretation, so I'm not surprised with a lot of the middling opinions. The more overwhelming ones are good, feminine, classic, youthful, upperclass, refined, strange, simple and serious, which aren't really me I think...
Personally, I like my name because of its origin story. I get to break the ice uncomfortably with people by saying, "Yea, I was named after a prostitute." The looks I get are worth the years of torture I went through during Mortal Kombat's heyday.
My name was pretty boring - good, feminine, classic, upperclass, wholesome (wholesome? WTF?) refined, delicate - until I got to the comments, whence I got this fantastic gem:
I guess I'm weird but every time I hear the name Felicity I think of the word infidelity. So to me, it's a name for girls with 'questionable morals'.
Bwah ha ha ha ha! I love it! Such an excellent antidote to that damn American Girl doll.
Until recently, people responded to my birth name tellingly: they repeat it with a far-away tone, append a "Miss" to the front of it, and tell me how pretty, how sweet, how old-fashioned it is. In the last few years, the name has skyrocketed in popularity, so no one waxes poetic over it anymore.
I think you have the same name as my daughter. That was exactly the reaction we always got. Now it's threatening the top ten.
Specklet, that's funny, because all of the folks I've known with your first name (various spellings, including a famous feminist poet) have been female.
S_R: Many classic sex symbols had names starting with M. Not sure Myrna fits in there, except in my mind.
This game is a gender-role nightmare. Looks like all or almost all the "strong" names are male, while "delicate" are female. Almost all the "nerdy" are male, almost all the "unintellectual" female. Wholesomes? Female. Refined? Female. Rough? Male.
I just noticed that the name ranking and rating system is done "by users of this website" -- not the result of any scientific study. The very highest number of ratings is Sarah, rated 448 times - so we're not talking about a very large sample pool. There also aren't all that many names available in there to start with - maybe a thousand, it's hard to tell. In any case, I wouldn't place too much weight on your name's rating or on the graphs.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
