Essay #1

Caitlin O’Connor

September 5th, 2019

ENGL 101-133/134

Essay #1: Summary/ Response

Dave Mosher (2012) writes about pronounceable names in his article Easily Pronounced Names May Make People More Likable. He explains when we process a piece of information easier, we come to like it more. The idea that the brain favors Information that’s easy to use, dates back to the 1960s. In the Article they discuss how what conclusions might you come to about someone if his or her name is hard to pronounce and what factors come into play when making judgements about someone. 

The first study in What ‘s in a Name (2005) says that people can partly predict a person’s income and education using only their first name. I don’t agree with this because you cannot predict someone's life by judging their name. “ The effect is often very, very hard to quantify because so much depends on context, but it’s there and measurable,” Said Alter. One of the 3 tests they ran on surnames concluded that most people like what they are already used to hearing in their everyday lives. For example, if you like a certain person with that name you are more likely to pick that name regardless of how hard it is to pronounce. Another test was on 500 randomly selected lawyers, which rated pronounceability and likability. After comparing the results of salary, 1.5 percent of lawyers success seemed to rest on pronounceability of his or her name. In this study they are not totally sure if the name has any effect on how to pronounce his or her name on the salary. There is a lot of other factors that come into play when comparing salaries because it could just come down to who is better at their jobs and who is the better lawyer. 

The next important idea is about Top 10 Baby Names (2011). You can notice from the most common baby names that they are all simple. The author of the article states “ If and when he has children, he said, he plans to keep their names simple. “ I think that it doesn’t matter even after reading about all these studies what you name your child won’t decide if they are rich or poor. Or good or bad at their jobs. 

In conclusion, in these experiments, names and a person's life does not affect a person's life. Therefore, it’s just a fun experiment conducted on people's names . Alter statements about names could have some truth to them, but it’s important to know there are so many other factors that come into play in someone's life. It’s not just decided by the person who gave you your name what your lifes gonna turn out to be.