When immigrants came to America a century ago, many of them Americanized their names by, for example, changing their first name from Artyom to William. Researchers found that immigrants who Americanized their names fared better in the labor market and achieved higher incomes. A very interesting new article on ScientificAmerican reports on new research on the influence peoples name can have. Actually, I’m glad to learn this, as my last name seems to be hard to pronounce for many, so now I know why they don’t trust me.

“The pronounceability of people’s names affect more than just the perceived truthiness of statements attributed to those names. In other experiments, using the same names, Dr. Newman and colleagues asked participants to rate the names on their perceived familiarity, riskiness, and how dangerous the owners of those names seem. The results from these experiments showed that people with easier to pronounce names were judged as more familiar, less risky and less dangerous than individuals with difficult to pronounce names. So, who would you pick as your tandem skydiving partner, Bodo or Czeslaw? If you are anything like most English speaking people, you would be likely to prefer jumping out of the plane with Bodo. If, on the other hand, you find Polish easier to pronounce, you would probably choose to jump with Czeslaw.”
Read the whole article here.