Strange but true.
You may think this is far out, but bear with me a moment. Take a look at this table. It shows how you can be stereotyped according to your name.
What’s In A Name?
Positive Names
| People Thought They Were… | Female | Male |
| Intelligent | Abigail, Eleanor, Lisa, Meredith and Rebecca | Clifford, David, Edward, John, Samuel, Ned and Tim |
| Leaders | Ruth | Alexander, Dwight and Lance |
| Hardworking | Ada, Ingrid, Marie and Margaret | Jake, Manuel, Ron and Todd |
| Entrepreneurial and Professional | Lorraine and Sylvia | Gregory and Ted |
| Talented | Tina | Neil |
| Wealthy | Audrey, Paige and Victoria | Lucius, Edmond and Claude |
| Blue-Collar | Roxy | Arnie |
| Refined | Indira, Calista and Grace | Nigel, Alistair, Vaughn |
| Ambitious | Leigh | Cedric |
| Organized | Julianne | |
| Outgoing | Bernadette, Christy, Elaine, Gwen, Joy, Kathy, Kim, Patricia, Nancy and Wendy | Allen, Cole, Danny, Ed, Gary, Jim, Russ and Rob |
| Accountants (Nerdy) | Minerva and Ingrid | Myron and Reynold |
| Teachers | Trudy | Thomas |
| Wealthy Lawyers | Drew |
Negative Names
| People Thought They Were… | Name |
| Deceitful | Oswald |
| Awkward | Angus |
| Show-Off | Don |
| Bratty | Dennis |
| A Jerk | Ace |
| Stubborn | Rolf |
| Two-faced | Vera |
| Bossy | Joyce and Myrna |
| Opinionated | Rhea and Maud |
| Old and Overweight | Dolores |
| Dumb | Candy, Kiki and Vanna |
Source: CareerBuilder.com and Behind The Name
But what has this got to do with personal finance? Well actually, a lot. Stereotyping has its financial ramifications which have been recognized through several studies.
We live in a fairly prejudiced world. But “name discrimination” takes the cake. Maybe my diversified work place and my exposure to one of the most liberal work environments in the world (here in San Francisco, CA) has somehow conned me into thinking that things were cool at the office. Not to mention that all the companies I’ve worked for have solid stances on equal opportunity.
So I found it almost ridiculous that something that seemed so arbitrarily personal could stand in the way of your financial success and status. Apparently there are studies that prove that your NAME, of all things, can make a difference to your social and financial standing.
Well here are some specifics that prove that your name can wreck your chances of getting ahead, particularly if you have an African-American sounding name.
How A Name Affects Employment and Job Opportunities
A National Bureau of Economic Research Paper shows that job applicants with white names had a 50% chance of getting a callback over those who had African-American names. That is, traditional white sounding names only had to send 10 resumes to get one callback, while those that didn’t had to send out 15 resumes per callback. One of their unsettling findings is that maybe it’s employer bias in play, or the perception that race is tied to productivity.
Other facts from the study:
- Only resumes were reviewed; face to face meetings never took place.
- A white name’s callbacks yielded the equivalent of eight additional years of experience.
- Residential address also mattered to some degree, with more callbacks received for resumes tied to wealthier, more educated or more-white zip codes.
- Names made a bigger impact on results than addresses did.
- Results were the same across occupation and industry categories covered in the experiment.
- For companies with the “equal opportunity” byline, results didn’t seem to make a difference!
- Only when a name didn’t provide a clue to race, were other elements of the resume considered.
- More education and more skills displayed on a resume with an ethnic sounding name didn’t make a difference to the outcome.
- Names that indicated gender also had an effect on results.
- Names that worked in the experiment: Neil, Brett, Greg, Emily, Anne and Jill.
- Names that didn’t work in the experiment: Tamika, Ebony, Aisha, Rasheed, Kareem and Tyrone.
Could initial quick screening of resumes by headhunters cause this discriminatory effect? Imagine going through a huge pile of resumes which you need to whittle down to a manageable size. Without realizing it, an HR representative may be unwittingly applying their immediate impressions on the pile of paper before them. What else can they go on anyway?
How A Name Affects Housing Opportunities
Beyond snagging jobs, it turns out that name discrimination is also alive and well in the rental circuit. Another study by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology revealed these facts:
From 1,100 e-mail inquiries to Los Angeles-area landlords asking about vacant apartments advertised online, the traditional white sounding name elicited 89% of positive replies. A foreign sounding name brought in 66% of replies while the African-American name took in 56%. A landlord’s positive reply consisted of a follow up appointment to show off the property for lease or an indication that the place was available.
How A Name Affects Career Choices
Yet another study has struck fear in the hearts of would be parents. It turns out that kids with gender specific names become discouraged from certain educational interests thus affecting their long term course of study. What this means is that if you are named a girly sounding name, you end up avoiding math and the sciences. Sounds weird but true!
Girls who are given very feminine names, such as Anna, Emma or Elizabeth, are less likely to study maths or physics after the age of 16, a remarkable study has found. The effect is so strong that parents can set twin daughters off on completely different career paths simply by calling them Isabella and Alex, names at either end of the spectrum. A study of 1,000 pairs of sisters in the US found that Alex was twice as likely as her twin to take maths or science at a higher level.
Why would this happen? The explanation given is that like it or not, people have expectations of others based on their name. These expectations affect one’s self-image and cause typecasting. I guess a feminine person is not supposed to be studying math or physics.
This typecasting also works with ugly sounding names or those names identified with lower class or status. Those with lower class names (spelled in an unusual way or with punctuations) would average 3 to 5 percent lower than others with conventional names. Again, this was caused by imposed expectations. From the study, it was scary to hear that teachers who first saw a class roster admitted that they couldn’t help but form impressions of the children because of their names, before they all met.
Bottom line: I’m being somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, but think twice before naming your kids something bizarre, different, unique or even ethnic. The world is cruel and there are unfair consequences to doing something as commendable as honoring your forefathers with authentic names granted to future generations of your family line. Also, that immediate profit you can get by offering to name your kid GoldenPalaceDotCom is not worth their future. No matter how tempting it is, don’t do it!
In Conclusion: Forget Stan, Candy or Adolf
I agree with something I read, that “names are powerful indicators of who we are.” Our name serves as the label to our identity, pointing to culture, religious affiliation, sex, social position, ethnic background, tribal affiliation and even age.
Even where I work, more than a few guys have changed their names because, they claim, it was easier to remember and pronounce. What else is this but the first subtle step taken towards assimilation and the fulfillment of their American dream. Because of this, I wonder if to give your kid an edge in life, that you should consider more conventional and ordinary names?
Other Resources:
Can a Black Name Affect Job Prospects?
A Roshanda By Any Other Name
If you want to find out how your name rates, try out this interactive tool by entering your name in the search box.
Why does everyone talk about just the so-called black sounding names? What about Jose, Migel, Maria, etc? Considering how hot the illegal immigration debate is now, I would imagine many employers won’t even consider hiring a person with a Hispanic name.
Ted,
The studies only tested for black sounding (and to some degree, foreign sounding - it mentions middle eastern, in the case of tenancy) names; I’m not sure why they didn’t extend it to names from other regional “groups”.
I remember seeing the news on TV (I think on NBC) about employer’s “name bias” against certain names. I think it is quite sad that some employers use “name bias” to decide how someone is before even meeting the person.
Nice touch there with a double entry for “two-faced”. Though I am unable to make up my mind as to which one is the first-face and which the second
trawller,
thanks for the catch. I’ll fix the boo-boo when I get home. I wrote this article tongue-in-cheek. I think a lot of people from strong, cultural backgrounds who live in the US or away from their homelands resolve this issue by having both a Western and their real (family given) name. That way, it solves the requirements of all the communities they move, live and work in.
Name bias is a sad reflection on our shallow society (and thinking). Especially for a country of immigrants, it’s an absolutely ridiculous bias to harbor… just as worse as a racial bias.
For all you know, someone could name their child “Winston Churchill” and the brat could turn out to be a no-good bum - irrespective of how much power that name wields and someone named “Abdullah Hassan” could be contributing to NIH’s cutting edge research on Parkinson’s.
Changing a real-life name for success is just out of my league. That’s like taking a step backwards and encouraging more discrimination. So I don’t intend to do it for myself or my kids (in future). If companies don’t want to hire me because of my name… well, it’s their loss. They can take their preferred names and shove it up wherever they want to.
Pride hurts, but I am ready to take that pain.
Thanks for bringing this to light. I was blissfully unaware of how rampant it is till I read this post.
Golb,
It’s one of those things that fall between idealism and practicality. I still recall how there were some kids in my class that got teased mercilessly for their names. They would’ve been spared the pain if their parents went with more boring labels like the rest of us. So along these lines I wonder how much conforming we should do in our Western society in order to make our lives easier or perhaps even more “prosperous”? That’s a question that each family needs to answer personally for themselves. Yes it’s a sad state of affairs we’re in if we penalize people for their unique attributes. The world sucks in that regard.
There is a chapter on exactly this in Freakonomics, a fun best seller about real-life economics.
Some parents intentionally give their daughter a gender-neutral name. An Evan we know is headed to Harvard Law - her mother used this strategy, and it seems to have worked pretty well!
Golbguru - How could somebody NOT know about name discrimination? Jewish Americans have been Anglicizing their names for centuries. I was good friends with Chinese-Americans in college named “Bob” and “George” (hint: neither name was their birth name). I befriended several of the “Lost Boys” from Sudan. I soon learned that “David” or “Peter” was really Deng or Mabior.
People don’t do this because they think white-American sounding names sound better to them. They do it because at best people are ignorant or xenophobic and at worst racist.
When our son was born, we canvas several of our friends that are already parents on what technique they use to choose names. Surprisingly, one of them is the process of elimination. Eliminating names of people which the parents had bad experience with. EG, Jim bullied me when I was at primary school, so I am not going to consider the name “Jim” for my baby.
To me, this is such a myopic way of assessing names. We should look towards the positive impact of the names, and not focus on the negativity of the names. Unfortunately, names is one of those personal components that can make a strong first impression. Being human, we would subconsciously discriminate base on that.
tehnyit,
That just reminded me that THAT was exactly how it happened for us as well — how we chose our kids names! Well, I wasn’t particularly guilty of this, but my spouse would reject a lot of names based on some unpleasant memory with so-and-so as a kid. I found it silly until he suggested a name I didn’t like. And now I realize there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the suggestions, it was just that the name did remind me of an unfavorable past experience! It is terribly surprising! Bet you we’re all guilty of that one. Could this potentially extend to actual name bias on a subconscious basis? Scary thought!
Name discrimination is an enduring tradition, most notably practiced on Ellis Island:
“Your name please, sir?”
“Frankowitz.”
(writing on form) “S-m-i-t-h. Next in line, please.”
Crapper, I need to change my name…
Dennis:
“Crapper, I need to change my name…”
Why? Dennis is a good name.
Barry
Not sure if this is a New York thing, but I think Destiny Krystal and Jasmine are up there with Candy KiKi and Vanna.
[...] Name Discrimination! How It Affects Job and Career Choices, Life Status, Overall Success » Silicon … What I am still waiting for is a discussion of name discrimination based on uniqueness. The googleability of certain names vs. others–and the chances of finding “bad” things on a specific applicant go up exponentially for Zaphods vs. Johns, for instance. (tags: names discrimination sociology psychology) [...]
I use a pseudonym because of a semi-unfortunate name. My true name has some negative social connotations due to some events that occurred after my birth, plus in some cultures there are spelling and pronunciation issues. Thus, I looked for another family name that I could use that was simple and viola!
It’s quite unfortunate that stigma can get attached to names due to some event or experience just like that; there are connotations for everything… I have a couple of good friends named Katrina, and I found the name quite beautiful. Can’t believe how calamities can ruin a good name — I heard that nobody wants to name their kid Katrina now.
July 8, 2007 Edition…
Silicon Valley Blogger presents Name Discrimination! How It Affects Job and Career Choices, Life Status, Overall Success posted at The Digerati Life, saying, “This post discusses how companies discriminate based on name and other consequences of name …
[...] 9th, 2007 · No Comments A fascinating article in The Digerati Life examines the many ways names are perceived by people. For instance, the writer presents charts [...]
[...] Name Discrimination! How It Affects Job and Career Choices, Life Status, Overall Success from The Digerati Life. Silicon Valley Blogger’s first post: 7/30/2006. [...]
Late-Breaking Carnival Monday…
The Silicon Valley Blogger has an unusual post: we’ve all heard of discrimination based on race, or religion, or sexual orientation. But based on your name? It’s for real….
[...] Digerati Life gives an in-depth analysis of how your name could affect your job, career and life. I really wanted to know what people thought of Michael, but I’ll just guess that everyone [...]
For all those folks who mentioned changing their name to solve the problem of any potential discrimination in America. I Thank all of you for proving may case for reparations to African Americans. Being a Black person in this country is a curse in so many ways and now it appears that I don’t even have to show up in person to be discriminated against and/or treated like a 9th class citizen. Now to all the white folks who have ever heard Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton say, “whites in America enjoy many automatic built in advantages and benefits that blacks can’t even begin to dream about.” This is just one of those many benefits. It’s profoundly interesting on so many levels: There is an effort in America to abolish Affirmative Action…and let us not sugar coat any of that. We all know that killing AA is about whites taking even more opportunities away from qualified blacks and other minorities especially since corporations are shipping more jobs overseas. “Last Hired First Fired equals blacks getting fired before whites.” Blacks in many ways are white America’s social, psychological and economic cushion and safety net. With, regards to America’s baseball steroid scandal, who first, took the brunt of the media’s heat, and labeled a cheater and disgrace to baseball? Berry Bonds. Then to find out that many others, has been linked to steroid use in professional baseball but now the public’s outrage has been diminished and the other ball players face less damage to their reputations and careers. Again providing a cushion for others mentioned in the scandal like Roger Clemons. Let us not forget about the white NBA referee who was caught in the point shaving/betting scandal where he has been linked to organized crime, which didn’t stay in the news long, did it? The media downplayed it to the Michael Vic and B. Bonds stories. Nine out of ten people, in America thinks of Michael Jackson when the word pedophile is mentioned, but week end and week out NBC’s News show, Dateline, catches mostly white and some other non-black men in the act of trying to have sexual relations with minors, caught on Camera but yet there is still no character assassination of those perverted twisted bastards in the national media. Again, the white male has another black man to take the brunt of the public’s disgust. An example of whites, economic cushion is how the city of Detroit is completely surrounded by shopping malls, very close to but yet, not within the Detroit city limits, subsequently, never being able to benefit from the tax revenue of mostly black dollars to improve their own street lights, roads, after school programs for kids, police dept, fire dept and the list goes on. Red Lobster a few years ago said that their corporate policy is never to operate a franchise within the Detroit city limits but yet, if you go to any of the suburban Red Lobster’s, you will see them packed with black folks: many who travel to the suburbs to eat, which in turn supports the white suburban tax base. How about that sweet suburban tax setup. Not only do white communities rake in all the tax revenue from their own population and communities but they also are making a killing on black dollars, adding even more insane profit & tax revenue, that’s like having a double-triple-quadruple-profit stream. Whites, who own 100 percent of the property in their own communities, along.
with most of the land, businesses and property in the black communities. Just the thought process of how most Blacks in America spend 95 percent of their money in white owned businesses and I am sure that white America doesn’t spend 2 or even 1 percent of their money in black own businesses, that only adds to the total mind blowing paradox of it all. Blacks spend over 400 Billion dollars in white and non- black businesses in America but yet, this racist nation still treats us like crap. I don’t agree with Louis Farrakhan calling whites, “Blue Eyed Devils” but many, not all of white America’s actions and attitudes towards blacks suggest the latter indeed.
Have a blessed day
[...] Name Discrimination! How It Affects Job and Career Choices, Life Status, Overall Success from The Digerati Life. Silicon Valley Blogger’s first post: 7/30/2006. [...]
Oh, wah. Oh no my name sounds black the world hates me.
Be quiet.
Don’t complain until you don’t get hired because your last name is Polish and the HR gentleman was named Smythe.
You’re already thinking of “stupid” jokes, aren’t you? Yeah, I thought so.
I’m thinking of seriously changing my name, here I am a black man with a spanish first name, a muslim middle name. Its funny how people assume that I’m spanish before I meet them then to their shock I’m black which makes it worse, then they say oh is it pronounced Ray-mon lol. I feel as though all of my job applications are thrown out ass soon as they see that name “Ramon” on there. They probably think I’m not american. Abdul is my middle name and I don’t even dare put that on paper. My last name I’d never change but my initials spell R.A.P., a type of music that well received in the public eye. I used to work for a company for 7yrs the first 2yrs the owner thought I was spanish, he was white, he came back from south america handed me some fresh coffee beans as a gift and tried to speak to me in spanish.
I’m a black chick who’s currently job searching. I’m not sure what difference my name makes, I have a German last name and a cute first name that’s fairly ethnic sounding. Fortunately I can shorten my first name to something that’s still cute but racially ambiguous. I’m going to give it a shot, can’t hurt.
My parents were teachers. They chose my name because neither of them could remember teaching any snotty kids with that name.
I dislike it somewhat, especially as I mentioned a few other names which I preferred, like jessica, when I was small (6/7). They hadn’t thought of them. *sniff* I could have been a Jessica. grrrr
(it’s not really Ethel. I’d probably give them hell if it really was, though i don’t mind it as a nickname…)
My real name is unusual enough so that I prefer not using it, especially on the internet! So for now, I’ll stick with Silicon Valley Blogger.
I still remember the “Desperate Housewives” episode when Mike Delfino (James Denton’s character) insisted to his wife, Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher’s character) that they name their newborn child “Maynard”, after Mike’s grandfather who just died. We get names to honor our elders all the time, but um….don’t we need to get with the times too?
If only we could all have classic, innocuous-sounding names. With the rate of bullying going on around the nation these days, a safe-sounding name is indeed a benefit, esp for the young!
[...] Valley Blogger tells us How A Name Affects Job and Career Choices, Life Status, Overall Success posted at The Digerati Life. An interesting post about how your name could affect your [...]