© Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters
From dating to job prospects, a name has remarkable power over the path of its owner's life.I was at a party for Bastille Day in Paris a few years back, and we were leaning over the balcony to watch the fireworks. A cute French girl sat next to me, but after a few flirty glances the moment was entirely ruined with the most basic of interactions: "What's your name?" she asked in French. "Cody," I said.
That was it. We were done. "Co-zee?" she said, sounding out the entirely foreign name, looking more disgruntled with each try. "Col-bee?" "Cot-ee?"
I tried a quick correction, but I probably should've just lied, said my name was Thomas or Pierre like I did whenever I ordered take-away or made restaurant reservations. Not being able to pronounce a name spells a death sentence for relationships. That's because the ability to pronounce someone's name is
directly related to how close you feel to that person. Our brains tend to believe that if something is difficult to understand, it must also be high-risk.
In fact, companies with names that are simple and easy to pronounce see significantly higher investments than more complexly named stocks, especially just after their initial public offerings when information on the stock's fundamentals are most scarce. People with easier to pronounce names are also judged more positively and tend to be hired and promoted more often than their more obscurely named peers.There are more variables at play than just pronunciation, though. In competitive fields that have classically been dominated by men, such as law and engineering,
women with sexually ambiguous names tend to be more successful. This effect is known as the Portia Hypothesis (named for the heroine of Shakespeare's
The Merchant of Venice who disguises herself as a lawyer's apprentice and takes on the name Balthazar to save the titular merchant, Antonio).
A study found that female lawyers with more masculine names - such as Barney, Dale, Leslie, Jan, and Rudell - tend to have better chances of winning judgeships than their more effeminately named female peers. All else being equal, changing a candidate's name from Sue to Cameron tripled a candidate's likelihood of becoming a judge; a change from Sue to Bruce quintupled it.Names work hard: They can affect who gets into elite schools, what jobs we apply for, and who gets hired. Our names can even influence what cities we live in, who we befriend, and what products we buy since, we're attracted to things and places that share similarities to our names.A name is, after all, perhaps the most important identifier of a person. Most decisions are made in about
three to four seconds of meeting someone, and this "thin-slicing" is surprisingly accurate. Something as packed full of clues as a name tends to lead to all sorts of assumptions and expectations about a person, often before any face-to-face interaction has taken place. A first name can imply race, age, socioeconomic status, and sometimes religion, so it's an easy - or lazy - way to judge someone's background, character, and intelligence.
These judgments can start as early as primary school. Teachers tend to hold lower expectations for students with typically black-sounding names while they set high expectations for students with typically white - and Asian - sounding names. And this early assessment of students' abilities could influence students' expectations for themselves.On this year's French baccalaureate, an exam that determines university placement for high school students, test-takers named Thomas (for boys) and Marie (for girls) tended to
score highest. These are, you will note, typically white, French, middle- or upper-class names. One could imagine these students were given the advantage of high expectations and self-perception, whether or not they had the money and support that comes with the socioeconomic background associated with those names.
People change their names for different reasons. Angelina Voight became Jolie to
estrange herself from her father and Natalie Hershlag became Portman to maintain her
family's privacy. The inclusion of a middle initial in formal correspondence is a strong
identifier of intelligence (even though the
New York Times claims it's a dying trend). But what if parents from disadvantaged circumstances gave their children "advantaged" names? Could just a name really have that great of an effect on a person's career and future?
A
2004 study showed that all else being equal, employers selected candidates with names like Emily Walsh and Greg Baker for callbacks almost 50 percent more often than candidates with names like Lakisha Washington and Jamal Jones. Work experience was controlled and the candidates never met face-to-face with the employer so all that was being tested was the effect of the candidate's name. The researchers concluded that there was a great advantage to having a white-sounding name, so much so that having a white-sounding name is worth about eight years of work experience. "Jamal" would have to work in an industry for eight years longer than "Greg" for them to have equal chances of being hired, even if Jamal came from a privileged background and Greg from an underprivileged one. (Perhaps that's why mega-celebrities can get away with giving their children peculiar names. A résumé with the name North West probably wouldn't do as well as James Williamson - unless Papa Kanye called up the boss.)
After the girl at the party had so much trouble saying my name, I asked what her name was. "Edwige," she said. It's a lovely name, very French, but it is also pronounced the exact same way as "Hedwige," which just so happens to be the French version of Hedwig, the owl in
Harry Potter. "Don't make fun," she said, and I didn't. But neither did we talk very much for the rest of the night. But still, I wonder what would've happened if I had been a Pierre and she a Marion. Perhaps we would've gotten along quite well that night, perhaps we would've quickly trusted each other. Perhaps I'd have a date this weekend.
Cody C. Delistraty is a writer and historian based in Paris. He has worked for the Council on Foreign Relations, UNESCO, and NBC News.
Reader Comments
I don't think anybody up to date on the facts argues that shared culture doesn't open doors, and that not sharing cultural conditioning closes them.
The whole reason populations develop culture in the first place is to increase ease of communication and trust. It's a survival tool.
The objection is aimed at those who complain that there's something wrong with any of this.
Bitterly referring to the advantages proffered by a shared culture, calling it, "privilege", as if people are supposed to be ashamed of existing within a healthy informational substrate, is simply evidence that somebody finds themselves stuck in the middle of a population which leans numerically in a cultural direction they weren't brought up in.
The solution for those dispossessed should be training to get up to speed rather than hamstringing those who are already there.
#readthearticle
I remember in my well-spent SW London youth, if you were a Jamaican, or of Jamaican descent, it usually meant you were the loudest person in the room, and were an inspiration to others because of it. Several decades of phoney-baloney ethno-political programmes of one kind or another, and now the opposite is true, more's the pity.
When did I ever say anything about dying for the flag? F*** that for a game of marbles.
"Does anyone remember back in the day when a whole bunch of African Americans were complaining that they were being overlooked in the job market because of their names and everyone was saying it's sjw nonsense?"
You're full of SJW nonsense. There's another one, "African American". What kind of forked-tongue-ese conceit is that? Black Americans who've never been to Africa, nor have their parents, nor their parents parents, nor the parents of their parents parents calling themselves 'African American"? My maternal grandparents were Scottish. I don't go around referring to myself as a Scottish Englishman.
The assumption the kid being a chip from the same old block is not so far-fetched ...
"Bill or George!!! Anything but Sue!!!"....[Link]
It's no different than favouring someone purely on religion, race, gender etc if you ignore that person's level of competency. Yes, I've also listened to Mr Peterson... so I call your bluff.
Competency should be the yardstick used at least on the job market.... not names, not race, not gender, not culture etc BUT society also has a certain level of duty to all its members ultimately!
Why would I hire somebody who can't communicate with me? Why take on the extra challenge if I'm trying to keep the lights on and all my employees fed?
Is choosing a safe known over a risky unknown a racist act? -Within a specific definition of the word it is. Is it hateful? No. It's practical.
Cultural compatibility is an important, real component to consider when people are trying to work together.
Now STOP and don't start hammering out a finger-pointing response just yet. Taking the above out of context invalidates all responses; FIRST read and consider the following:
Cultural compatibility is not the ONLY component. And indeed, cultural compatibility can be outweighed by a variety of other indicators including compassion, fascination, sex, material trade, and of course, valued skill sets brought to bear. -Those are also important factors, among others.
Groups can and often do forgive an outsider whose contributions are otherwise limited due to language and cultural barriers when they are nonetheless trying in earnest to integrate enough to establish a mutually beneficial connection. A group can choose to make allowances for 'outsider risk' while the outsider gets up to speed, because in the end there can be great value obtained for the group in the long term. Cultures absorb elements of each other all the time, and they follow these rules of integration naturally.
But discrimination is a vital component of that process. To make the word a label of shame is insane. To criminalize rational choice based on extant data , is simply an attempt to centralize and artificially control an otherwise natural process. There can certainly be good arguments made for limited applications of state control in an effort to smooth the process of cultural integration, (and btw, I'd put the outlawing of child marriages and death by stoning in a different legal category), but it is very easy, as we see today, to overstep rational boundaries and create more problems than a states laws prevent.
I'll consider that the next time my application for a job as a waiter in a Chinese/Italian/Eritraean/Halal/Tandoori/Indonesian/whatever restaurant has failed.
@Lon Sabbatical:
He is our good humor man.
I like him, actually.
Works tirelessly in the manner of free speech and expression, seldom a takes a day or even a moment off.
Free speech is nearly always placed in doubt.
By those who would restrict us even more than we already are.
So we need him very much.
Here at Sott and elsewhere in the world.
ned
Speaking of the sixties:
It was a time when the flower children and their holy mother did battle with the children of the corn and their holy mother.
And the children of the corn won. It was truly an epic battle, though the end was never in doubt, not really. And one that still 'echoes' in our modern subsidized, commercially packaged and highly stabilized? world.
The flower children:
[Link]
The children of the corn:
[Link]
The many faces (moods) of Eve (aka Shiva) and the names that she chooses for her various 'blessed ones', depending on her mood.
Yes, it does make a difference.
ned,
out
My friend, my lovely flag bearing friend, why is thou so inflicted with such a curse?
You tell me who I am, always... yet you are blind to yourself so blind that a blind person even takes pity upon your predicament.
Lets play to your gifts, go on.... Tell me more about myself.
#flags #proudoftheflag #slavetotheflag #theflagisGod
Also, the politization, the emotional emphasis, and general propagandizing of most news and information doesn't help anyone think critically.
For example, if you moved to China right now and that became your home, you'd only be able to integrate up to a certain level. No doubt you'd retain many of your westernized quarks and attributes.
BTW, I'm still waiting for you to show me where I said anything about flags, you hallucinating ethicless nut job cry baby slander bag.