Introduction

Names are a symbol of one’s identity and usually have a deep significance that we might not
be aware of. They are a hint in a variety of situations and elicit feelings that impact on relational
dealings. I believe that the names we are given or the ones we choose at some point represent the
most private part of ourselves, besides the framework of our skin, and they can also denote a lot
of meanings and interpretations.

Everyone has a name. That’s extraordinary when you think about it, because it’s one of the very
few social things that all human beings have in common. You might be a Kevin, a Felicia, a
Muhammad, a Holly, and so on. It’s part of your identity and it 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 Fryer 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 Ernest or something. But your name will certainly
affect your future. A study called “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and
Jamal?” by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan unearthed at least one disturbing trend
about names. Job applicants with equal qualifications – or even otherwise identical resumes – are
about 50% 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 a way
to ‘place’ you in their vision of society. This isn’t about whether their vision is correct – that’s a
prejudice – but it does affect how people with these expectations and 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 career1.

For example, is someone named “Helen Painter” more likely to be an artist? Is someone named
“Jimmy Hogg” more likely to work with pigs? Matthew Mirenberg and John Jones think so. In

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their study “Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore”, these researchers found that people are
more likely “choose careers whose labels resemble their own names.”2 So, to use one of their
examples, people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among… dentists. Mirenberg and
Jones believe this happens because people prefer things that they connect with themselves,
including their names.

Also, in Kaplan’s The Language of Names (16) we encounter the following definition for names:

“Names are what anthropologists call cultural universals. Apparently there has
never been a society able to get along without them. They are among the first
things we ask or learn when we meet someone new, and we use them to form
immediate but often unreliable conclusions about personality and ethnicity.”

He argues that:

“ names shape the language of the daily drama of gesture, avowal, and inference
that is part of our social life. Full personal names, first and last taken together,
stand at the intersection of opposing pulls: they set the bearer apart as an
individual but also provide the bearer with family and extended kinship ties, and
so focus both the present and the past. And beyond this, they have an occult
associative and symbolic power. They are charms.”

As it is stated, we understand the names can be considered trademarks which both identify and
differentiate an individual from another individual. Principally we can say that personal identity
points out the aspects that make us unique and distinguishable from other human beings
(biological givens, significant identifications, meaningful social roles). Our given name is one of
the aspects that contribute to this uniqueness. Needless to say that names are deeply connected to
our personal identity and form a bridge between our intrinsic self and the extrinsic one, or how
other people perceive us. Most importantly, first names seem to play a significant role in
marking social status, rank, and relationships.

According to Oxford dictionary, a name is a word or set of words by which a person, animal,
place or thing is known, addressed or referred to. Our primary focus is on human names
narrowing it down to just human names from the general subject of names, and it barely zooms

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in the image because the topic of names is so large. This is true because names vary greatly
across gender, race, culture and heritage. This is also true because there are over seven and one
eight billion people that live in the world and 120 million more that will be born this year. Every
single one of these people has gone through or will go through the process of receiving a name.

Although the process of receiving a name greatly varies between people their own forms of
induction into their society. A common practice for an American citizen might be getting named
on a birth certificate and then later getting baptized in the Christian Church. Edward the Lucien
discovered that for the highest people in Africa it is a rigorous ceremony consisting of pouring
rice liquor and reciting a list of names.

Whatever the process may be, it ultimately concludes with a name that will define the rest of
their life and why people tend to feel pressure to represent their name but this does not always
necessarily involve the individual’s interests. Let's say that someone is driving down the road in
a magnet car. On the right and left side of the road there are two magnets that pull the vehicle to
the right or the left side of the road. In this analogy the magnetic car is you and your name. The
road’s link is your life. The magnet on your right is your urge to uphold and represent your life
and the magnet on your left is an individual force of your name. The car will almost always start
on the right side of the road but will soon begin to bob and weave on the road depending on the
decisions you make. The car will eventually settle in a certain position on the road as your life
reaches its end. In your life the shakiest part of the drive will consist of the time between your
teens and your early 30s. It is here that your name's true defining point reaches up to. So how
does one’s name impact identity? Does that name’s uniqueness inheritance or connotation have
any impact?

One can consider the most famous love story. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy about two star-
crossed lovers whose deaths are ultimately caught by their love actions and family feuds. The
motif of the conflict is the names that the characters behold, Romeo being a Montague and Juliet
a Capulet, both being rival families. Both Romeo and Juliet both aspire to leave their last names
in order to obtain a life without pressure and rivalry.

Names of characters, however, convey what their creators may already know and feel about them
and how they want their readers to respond. In a novel, names are never neutral, they always

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signify, if it is only ordinariness and arriving at names is an integral part of creating characters.
Names produce an extraordinary illusion, the accidental affinity or coincidence of a name,
connected with ridicule or hatred, with pleasure or disgust, has operated like magic.3 The writer
of fiction counts on this in order to convince his readers that the invented characters have a real
existence.

Moreover, in Kaplan’s book we discover that serious fiction writers try to invest their characters
with names that are at least not easily forgotten, although there are plenty of weak, unconvincing
characters with colorless names. It’s tempting to break such names down into their constituent
meanings and associations, also to speculate how a writer’s imagination allows a particular name
to fasten itself, like sperm to ova, to a particular character.4

That is the reason why it is important to understand one’s name or nickname and how it
influences the development of one’s personality and social life. Our given name is our very first
social badge. Each name is a mix of characteristics, look and conduct. These clichéd facial
expectations of how we should look over time may ultimately manifest in our facial appearance.
We grow the personality that other persons expect us to display.

Taking into consideration the proper name itself, three types of significance can be discerned
(Nikonov, 1974, as cited in Bagby & Sigalov, 1987): (1) its etymological meaning, (2) the
name's signifying meaning (function of the proper name as label), and (3) its social meaning
representing the symbolism of a name that has acquired historical meaning within a given
culture. Bagby and Sigalov (1987) mention that all proper names have signifying meaning,
which therefore becomes the most important in the trialogical emergence of the self. For some
the etymological significance is known, but must be restored in most cases and in the rare ones
names actually possess symbolic cultural meaning. The latter is sometimes intentionally used in
literature when names become iconographic sign as in Tolstoi’s “The Cossacks” (cp. Bagby &
Sigaliv, 1987)5. In some cultures, we encounter the basic theory of commemorative naming as
mutuality, in which choices about whom to perceive as a benefactor represent an important role.
We understan how implicit rules allow for a critical and selective statement of social positioning.
The arrangement of genealogical background to present social experience hence is echoed in the
names given.

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In the following pages, I will concentrate mainly on the above mentioned aspects of naming and
its implied consequences. I will consider analyzing famous and impactful names that made
history throughout the years in several fields such as politics, cinema, literature, etc. A thorough
investigation will be made in order to establish if indeed our given names have an influence
upon our personality and social status.

Bibliography:

1. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 - retrieved on April the 3rd, 2018

2. Pelham, B. W.; Mirenberg, M. C. and J. T. Jones (2002), “Why Susie Sells Seashells by
the Sea-Shore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions,” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, Vol. 82 (4), 469-487
3. Kaplan, Justin & Bernays, Anne: The Language of Names, New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1999 (174-175)
4. Kaplan, Justin & Bernays, Anne: The Language of Names, New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1999 (174-175)
5. Bagby, L., & Sigalov, P. (1987). The semiotics of names and naming in Tolstoi's "The
Cossacks". The Slavic and East European Journal, 31 (4), 473-489