Can the first letter of your name predict your profession and the metropolis you live in ? If that were the pillowcase , I should probably be a illusionist living in Milan – which , unluckily , I ’m not . But , according to a late study , I may be the outlier here , and our public figure really might influence our life story choices .
This is a phenomenon callednominative determinism – the idea that the great unwashed tend to gravitate toward areas of work that fit their names . Examples of people with well - matched names and careers are legion . For example , atmospheric condition presenterSarah Blizzard , catastrophe direction scholarDr Bang , marine biologistHelen Scales , and nutrition and obesity researcherWilliam Dietz .
old enquiry has suggested that we show a preference for letters in our own names , and that this preference may involve our decisions , such as our choice of professing or the metropolis in which we be . However , plenty of other work has questioned the reliability of the effect , which is why investigator at the University of Utah sought to investigate whether or not it exists in the literal world .
“ nominal determinism would advise that a person named Dennis is more likely to pick out to be a tooth doctor than , say , a lawyer , or that Dennis is more potential to choose to go in Denver than Cleveland , ” they indite in the sketch . To find out if this holds true , they used expectant language simulation groom on Common Crawl , Twitter , Google News , and Google Books to capture millions of natural event of people ’s names , their professions , and the metropolis they live on in .
They ended up with 3,410 names from the US Social Security Administration ’s publically available dataset , 508 profession , and 14,856 city . First names were favour to egest reverse causality ( e.g. people with the last name Disney work at the Walt Disney Company ) and because they are less likely to change throughout a person ’s life .
After controlling for various factor , include gender , ethnicity , and the frequency of names and professing , the researchers report finding “ consistent evidence of the kinship between people ’s names and a preference for major life choices starting with the same letter as their first name . ”
This nominated determinism effect was ordered over the decade of the 20th hundred , although the pattern was find to be dissimilar for man and cleaning lady .
“ While man show a consistent pattern of the nominative determinism gist across the tenner for profession choices , cleaning woman show a much grim effect in the early part of the twentieth century , though as time pass on , the result increase , ” they indite . This , the author suggest , could reflect the increased freedom women were allowed in life history survival as time went on .
The bailiwick is limited by the grouchy - sectioned nature of the data point , entail it only allow a snapshot of nominal determinism . However , it does seem to lend some acceptance to its universe .
Perhaps it ’s time to book the flight of steps to Italy and attend into enrolling in magic schooling .
The bailiwick is issue in theJournal of Personality and Social Psychology .
