It’s All in a Name

by Godfrey J. Ellis

This illustration was meant to show that a person’s name was not just descriptive, it was also predictive. In other words, people tend to grow into whatever stereotype is suggested by the names that were given to them. An article in Psychology Today points out the fact that, “Names matter.  Whenever we hear one, we draw a wide  range  of  assumptions  about  the  individual (or item) in question.”[1]  I wrote that, “Unfair though it may be, we simply do not expect the same behavior  from  a  Bartholomew as we do from a Bud, from a Suzie as we do from a Bertha, from a Jack as we do from a Jeremiah.  To an extent, names do not merely identify us, they partly make us.”

[1] Sam Sommers, “What’s in a Name?  What your name says about you (and how it says it),” Psychology Today, in: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/ blog/science-small-talk/201207/whats-in-name.