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If you're a regular reader, you know that among my petty annoyances are stupid baby names.
This Guardian story from April talks about a recent University of Florida study which concluded that people do form pre-conceived notions about other people based on their names -- in particular, people will presume levels of competence based on the assumed masculinity or femininity of a name. Moreover, that can actually translate into real performance.
The article goes on to talk about "chav" names ("chav" is a British slang term for lower-class people, somewhat akin to the American term "trailer-park trash" or "wigger"). In a study of 55,000 children, those with "lower-status" names (i.e. made-up names, non-standard spellings of traditional names, etc...you know, the names that drive me batshit) scored 3-5% lower on standardized educational tests.
In other words...if your daughter has a name that's perceived as very feminine, she might find herself trained into thinking she is less able at math or science than if she has a more androgynous name. AND, if your kid is named Mykayla or Kaitlynn or Lemonjello or something like that, she has another knock against her.
My daughter has a name that definitely falls into the "feminine" category, I think, even though it's not listed in that Guardian piece. But one of the common nicknames for girls named "Charlotte" is "Charlie", which is unquestionably more masculine (she is, in fact, named after my father-in-law). So I'll be interested to see if this particular form of gender bias comes her way as she begins her school career in earnest.
Funny you should mention this. I saw a story about parents wanting to name their child "4real" in New Zealand.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/21/name.child.ap/index.html
New Zealand officials have told them they can't, since numerals aren't allowed.
Stupid, made-up names are one of my pet peeves as well. We stuck to traditionally female names for our daughters, but it amazes me to see how some people spell them (I'm sorry - but L-I-N-Z-E-E? - Puh-leeze).
Posted by Tony [URL] at 06/22/07
I hate statistics like that...there are so many variables that might affect test scores that identifying a child's name as a contributing effect seems ridiculous.
BTW...did you see the author's name of that article?
My daughter has a traditional masculine name that is spelled in a non-traditional way. It would give you shudders in a big way.
I chose it with a mind toward gender masking so that she might be able to avoid something like preconceived expectations by virtue of her name. So far, she's been assigned twice to boy's sports.
Posted by Karan [URL] at 06/22/07
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