Your Name May Shape Your Destiny

Study: Initials May Make Or Break Grades, Baseball Strikeouts, And More

(WebMD)  Your name may help put you at the head of the class or leave you in the strikeout column, a new study shows.

The researchers report that MBA students whose first or last names start with the letters A or B tend to make better grades than those whose names start with C or D.

What's more, Major League Baseball players whose names begin with the letter K strike out more often than those whose names don't start with K, the letter used to record strikeouts.

So say Leif Nelson, PhD, and Joseph Simmons, PhD, in December's edition of Psychological Science.

Nelson works at the Rady School of Management at the University of California at San Diego. Simmons works at Yale University's School of Management.

Together, they studied the effect that certain initials have on certain measurements of success.

They also found that law school applicants whose names began with A or B were more likely to get into top-ranked law schools than those with other initials.

What gives with the name game?

Nelson and Simmons suggest that people have a subtle bias toward the letters in their monogram.

"For example," they write, "Toby is more likely to buy a Toyota, move to Toronto, and marry Tonya than is Jack, who is more likely to buy a Jaguar, move to Jacksonville, and marry Jackie."

So they reason that Christine may not find a C grade quite so bad as Anna.

To test the theory, the researchers presented online word puzzles to 225 people. Before tackling the puzzles, the researchers mentioned prizes for success or consolation prizes for failures.

The prizes were labeled with a letter, such as "Prize X."

When their first names matched the initial on the consolation prize, they solved fewer puzzles.

Of course, the researchers aren't suggesting that anyone judge a person by their name.

There's no reason Kevin couldn't be a baseball star. And the theory doesn't cover the whole alphabet, so William and Zena aren't doomed to bad grades.

[rosebud826]

For someone with an MBA you would think they could do a complete study and work with all 26 letters in the alphabet instead of just a select few!!!

[cdfoxtrot]

Completely stupid, second-rate "research".

[luvcomments]

"Of course, the researchers aren''t suggesting that anyone judge a person by their name. There''s no reason Kevin couldn''t be a baseball star. And the theory doesn''t cover the whole alphabet, so William and Zena aren''t doomed to bad grades."

So, the point of this article is.............???

[incog-nito]

Really? How come nobody names their kids "Winner" or "TheBest", or maybe "FilthyRich"?

[ecuadoriana]

Oh for crying out loud.

This sounds like some back of the short bus sing-song/game that kids play to see who they will marry: "A my name is Alice & I went to the Appliance store to buy some Apoxy & met my true love Adam..."

What, are these "researchers" like 5 years old?

PhD?? What does that stand for? Poopy Head Doctor?

[usayesterday]

The researchers report that MBA students whose first or last names start with the letters A or B tend to make better grades than those whose names start with C or D.
..............

Whew... I just finished laughing my a$$ off for the past 10 minutes!

By the way, my first name is Adam...

...I got C''s and D''s in High School and College.

So much for that study.

[adian1-2009]

The great European educator, essayist, novelist, philosopher, university professor of Greek (he learned Greek so he could read the great Greek writers in their own language (Homer and others), Don Miguel de Unamuno, said many years ago (he passed away in 1933 or 34), that the name given to a person could make said person happy or unhappy during his/her life. This is a very old theory.

[hcob25]

we can so tell that you guys dont have a life. Well if you really want to get one just call 1-888-get-a-life.

WGAS.......someone wasting time and resources in figuring out this junk needs to get a real lif and job.

[hypnotoad72]

Ok. And is the "Rod" in A-Rod Spanish for "Hole"?

I know my name, looked around at my preferences, and funnily enough not one of them starts with a "D".