A first name is an incredibly important part of someone's life. It is a characteristic that every culture has. It is, hopefully, a unique device for distinguishing yourself from the sea of people that inhabit this earth. The internet is riddled with baby-naming websites and articles. You are not born with a name engraved on your forehead.
So one question thrown around many times is how much does your first name affect your life? Since a name has nothing to do with genetics, it can be very decisively categorized into Nurture. Some people would argue that you are who you are no matter what the name ("What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"). Others would say that because you have that name, you have that life.
I personally believe that in most cases, your first name does not change your personality and life choices. If that was true, then all the Sarah's would be high school counselor and all the Katie's would be incredibly environmentally conscious. Do you see where I'm going with this?
There are some exceptions as to how your first name can affect your future:
Bad names and their outcome
I believe that if you have a ridiculous enough name, you either accept it to run your life or you overcome it. By overcome it, I when you curse your parents and "show them" by exceeding what the invisible standard is.
Still, it is interesting how much importance a name has, especially in your early years. I remember wanting to change my name to Nicole when I was in grade school. I remember not wanting to tell my middle name. Did those years change my life and personality in an irrevocable way? I don't think so, but maybe you think otherwise?
I had never thought of a name having a negative affect on your future, or that someone's name could almost be stereotyped. I also have a first name that is fairly uncommon, but I never thought growing up that I would be judged just because of my name. Great topic!
I, too, had never before thought of one's name having a negative effect on his or her future. I don't think it can, unless you were to let it affect your confidence level in such a way that it affected what kinds of decisions you made. I have an old-fashioned name, and I remember wishing I could change it to something prettier or "cooler" in elementary school, but now, it's just not a big deal anymore. I'm under the impression that most people just accept their names, live their lives, and would be basically the same people regardless of what their names were. Again, that's just my take, perhaps someone would have a valid reason to disagree with that. Interesting topic!
I've always had some interesting things happen in my life, being a guy named Kerry. Even though it is a name used for both genders, it is still primarily a girl's name, so I'm never really surprised when someone calls out my name (taking attendance with a sub teacher in high school, for example) and is noticeably surprised when they hear a deep voice respond, "Here!" People have even gone out of their way to do good things for me, like when I got a customized trophy with a girl's body for my 1st grade baseball trophy. However, none of this has ever effected my life in any drastic way, it only adds a few laughs once in a while.
Wow! This is really interesting, I never knew that your name could have an effect on your personality. I always thought it was just who you were known as to other people. Pretty much how you had said- tells us apart from all the other people in the world. Also, I believe that your name does not have an effect on your personality it is just something that is apart of you. Your personality depends on your upbringing and the world around. So I defined to agree with you that your name has nothing to do with your personality falls into the category of nurture.
I agree with you that the names given to us shouldn't take over our life all that much or alter who we become as a person. However, I can see how a name may cause obstacles in life. For example, many people would consider my last name to be hard to pronounce, and whenever it's the first day of school I dread coming to class to hear teacher's butcher out my name. But that doesn't necessarily affect who I am today.
This is very interesting! As for myself, my mom wanted to name me Emma, but my dad hated that name, so he chose Adrianne, the name I have now. I always wanted to change my name to Annie (mostly because my Grandma called me that, she wanted my name to be Annie). I feel that in some way, the name you're given controls your life just a little bit. With my name, is it obvious that I would hear "YO ADRIANNE!"from just about everyone new that I meet (the reference comes from the movie Rocky). I deal with it every time I meet someone knew! This does not bother me at all; however, someone else with the same name might be bothered in that they do not have an original name, or something more generic not linked so some popular movie.
For those who have the ridiculous names, such as a very close friend of mine, B.J., he's had to grow up with this name (standing for Bill Junior). Even though he does have quiet a ridiculous name, he has never let it get to him. He was called names (another name for the abbreviation), but since his parents called him that, he always knew what his full name is (William), and that B.J. was only an abbreviation. It never brought him down, made him feel depressed, nothing. Today he still goes by B.J., and it still does not bother him. But in totality, the name you're given does control your life, even if it's barley noticeable.
Of course name does nothing to our characteristics and future. I believe some names seem to have a specific aura but it's just because of the culture that made that stereotype. For example, i think of a smart person when someone said she's Sarah. But that doesn't mean that the person would be perfectly like how i thought. So I strongly believe there is no correlation between name and future& characteristics. oh by the way, nice youtube video.
Having an extremely uncommon name myself, I definitely find the post interesting. Whether or not people's names have a strong correlation with their personalities and lives seems very unlikely from a scientific standpoint. I've found that people either remember my name BECAUSE it's unusual, or it seems that they forget it because it's too uncommon. I can definitely see a memorable name being advantageous from a networking standpoint, but not at all as being significant from a somewhat biological/environmental standpoint. I appreciate that you pointed out that the circumstances are purely related to nurture, though.
I found this post interesting because I have an unusual name: Cozy. But I wonder if the name-personality correlation might not be the other way around. What if our parents tend to pick names that are more suited to their personalities, and since we often take after our parents, our names therefore seem to fit our personalities? This obviously wouldn't be true all of the time, but it could account for the perception that our names determine our personalities. For instance, I was named Cosette, but my parents nicknamed me "Cozy" the day I was born, because when they were holding me I looked, well, cozy. And the name stuck. Then again, nicknames might bring a whole new dimension to this discussion.
I don't think that your name can change you as you suggest, unless you let it. However I also think that we grow into our names. For instance, have you ever had someone say "Oh, you look like a Laura, a Reggie, a whatever name..." If you have an out of the box name you can grow to become more of a type of person that everyone else will grow to associate with that name. Names do have an extraordinary impact on our lives.
In my opinion, your first name would not change you but it might affect you in some way. Our first names are what we hear every day at least one time. This means that we are living as our first name. Of course, it would be ridiculous that all the people whose names are sarah become school councelor. However, I think that they would have personality of counsellor at any portion. I think every person has aura and that comes from our first name. And I think that after knowing the meaning of the name, I unconsciously act like that way. I think first name does affect to people in anyway.
In Principles of Microeconomics we went over how employers looking to hire someone are less likely to contact you if they see on your resume that you have a weird name. That's mostly because of racial discrimination but your post's emphasis on names made me remember it. I think it'd be too bad if a person's name could affect them. A name doesn't tell you anything about a character of a person so if someone thinks less or more of you because of your name it means that they are forming unjustified opinions.
Just like you said, the characteristic of first name is happened in every culture. In China, people spends trousands of yuans or even more(couple of hundreds dollars) to pay master just for asking to change a good name, we believe if people change a better name, they will have a better luck. It's intersting to know people believe this kind of stuff too in America.
Just like you said, the characteristic of first name is happened in every culture. In China, people spends trousands of yuans or even more(couple of hundreds dollars) to pay master just for asking to change a good name, we believe if people change a better name, they will have a better luck. It's intersting to know people believe this kind of stuff too in America.
I don't really think a person's name has an impact on their personality. However, I do believe that a person's name can or cannt match their personality, if that makes any sense. For example, my name "Victoria", is way too formal sounding for my laid back personality so I chose to go by "Tori" because I feel that it fits me better.