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How does your name affect your personality?

Aquarelle

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I just saw this article on Live Science about how a child's name can affect that child's behavior and personality:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/baby-names-effects-100610.html

I've always wondered whether people's names influenced their personalities. What do you think? Yea or nay? Personal experiences? Thoughts to share?
 

rav3n

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Not certain this isn't looking at things backwards. Is it possible that within certain environments that select names where the children can be teased badly, that it's the environment that causes the problems where the main factor is their home environment and secondary, the teasing at school which doesn't help.

Went to school with a guy with the last name of Fok who was about as dorky as you can get. Needless to say, he was teased mercilessly at school but not by our group.
 

jbking

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Hhhhmmm...

Yes but I think the article misses a couple of things. First, how many people use their real legal name? Most people that know me know that I prefer J.B. over John by a bazillion percent. JB is more of my identity and where I see myself rather than John, yet I suspect that study would have looked at me as a John that could produce false results. "John King" is a rather common sounding name while "J.B. King" seems a bit more higher class to my mind but my full name would be "John Brock King II" which does have a nice regal tone to it.

Having a name that is rare can encourage one to be more of an individual rather than blend in to the background or at least that would be my thought. If one has a name that is the same as a handful of other kids in school then this may make someone not feel as special where they are the only one. I did find someone who like to be called "Jaby" which sounds just like JB so I did eventually find my doppelganger, but that had its own twists in my life I suspect.
 

Vasilisa

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My name has definitely affected my life, and likely my personality as a result. It's not trendy or in the "poorly-educated parent" subtype either. Its just very contradictorily foreign, it takes a special kind of polyglot to get my name right on the first try, moreso in the US. And that does something to a person, to have everyone mispronounce your name at first. I used to tense up before any kind of roll call. And in my youth because I moved to new locations so frequently, there was always another audience of new people waiting to stumble over my name. Just another attribute to help me stand out, as if being shy and tall and the perennial new girl weren't enough. But it is unique and I think that has helped me find myself that way. I've made some peace with my name. It still annoys me if strangers just butcher it without a thought. I'm sensitive to that. If I don't know how to pronounce someone's name, I will ask, not just try to mumble some jumble as if thats going to fool anyone. :rolli:
 

Nijntje

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My name has definitely affected my life, and likely my personality as a result. It's not trendy or in the "poorly-educated parent" subtype either. Its just very contradictorily foreign, it takes a special kind of polyglot to get my name right on the first try, moreso in the US. And that does something to a person, to have everyone mispronounce your name at first. I used to tense up before any kind of roll call. And in my youth because I moved to new locations so frequently, there was always another audience of new people waiting to stumble over my name. Just another attribute to help me stand out, as if being shy and tall and the perennial new girl weren't enough. But it is unique and I think that has helped me find myself that way. I've made some peace with my name. It still annoys me if strangers just butcher it without a thought. I'm sensitive to that. If I don't know how to pronounce someone's name, I will ask, not just try to mumble some jumble as if thats going to fool anyone. :rolli:

My name is not a particularly common one even in it's country of origin and combined with my surname, which is also foreign to Australia it creates this double hit of just WAITING for it to be mispronounced.

Most of the time in roll call or if i'm at the doctors they won't even bother trying with my first name, but it was funny when i went back to uni in the first tutorial group of any new class and the tutor does a roll call the same familiar thing happens and they stop just as they get to my name, and i KNOW they're stuck on my name, i tend to give them the abbreviated version of it, just to move things along faster.

My name has without a doubt shaped who i am, i cannot remember a day where i haven't had to explain it to someone, or repeat it, or pronounce it phonetically for people and still have them butcher it. Life would have been vastly different if i had've been Kate as my parents were originally going to go with.

But i am actually pretty close to being at peace with my name now, i love the poem it comes from and the meaning behind it. I like that it is different and i don't mind going through how to pronounce it if someone is willing to try.
 
S

Sniffles

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My name is rather old fashioned - so in that sense I could see how it effected my personality.
 

Nijntje

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Still, it would be nice even if I had an old-fashioned name that people could pronounce it.

But I've also only ever had the experience of meeting two other people with my name, so it would be odd to hear someone use it and NOT be talking about me. I'd kind of like that experience actually.
 

Tallulah

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Mine's not super common, but not strange, either. It is, however, spelled the most complicated way you can spell it without going into "kre8tif" territory. So almost no one spells it right on the first try. I like my name, but resented the fact that I could never find it on stickers when I was a kid. I think it made me very aware of how others spell their names, so once I notice your spelling, I'll alway spell it right. It bugs me when people see your name in writing, then still misspell it. I kind of expect people to misspell it on the first try.

I think my name fits me. I'm glad I didn't have a super common name, and I'm really glad I didn't get a name like Britnee or something. That wouldn't fit my personality at all, and I'd probably have changed it or gone by a middle name.

Sometimes I wish my name was something like Tallulah in real life. I like names that are kind of grand and stand out without being stupid or trying too hard. I'd love for my name to be Octavia or some such.
 

Zoom

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Yes, my name did affect me - both the one I was called for the first fifteen years of my life and my real name. The first one was fitting in certain ways, and the second has meaning and fully describes me - even though I also have to tell others how to spell it every single time.
 

Bamboo

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What sort of personality would you expect from someone named Josh? (not my name)
 

Snuggletron

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an ENFJ, of course I associate Josh with a Josh I know, so that's why.

I can't really say my name has affected my life in any notable way.
 

Nameless Hero

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Only because everybody cuts me off (with complements about my greatness) whenever I try to introduce myself...
 

Queen Kat

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My name is a classic in Hungary. Unfortunately I grew up with this name in the Netherlands and here it's trashy, unpronounceable and hard to spell. When I was little everybody told me they loved my name, but later on I had to correct more and more people's pronounciations. So my name is mostly a huge frustration to me. And it's strange here, so maybe it's one of the reasons why I don't fit in anywhere. Well, maybe I'd fit in in a strip club. :huh:
 

Aquarelle

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My name is not especially common (well, it is more nowadays, but when I was a kid, there was only one other person with my name in our grade, and when I graduated high school she was still the only other person, in our class of 500, with my name). I think that has affected me to some extent. My name was going to be Michelle, and I'm thankful that it didn't end up that way. Nothing wrong with the name, I just don't think it would fit me. Of course, if they had named me that, maybe I would think that about my current name. :)

In recent years, I've noticed that people people refer to my name as a "stripper name" (like people on TV will say that, or people online who don't know my real name), and bitchy and/or slutty female characters on TV shows frequently tend to have my name. I don't know when it acquired that connotation, but at this point in my life I don't care. I'm glad it didn't have that association when I was a kid.

I think a lot about naming.... my favorite girl name is after my grandma, so it's old fashioned and not common, but not "weird" or hard to spell or pronounce. However, my favorite boy name is a traditional Irish name, and anyone who is familiar with Irish knows that spelling is damn near impossible in that language! ;) I like the traditional spelling and I wouldn't want to Americanize it, but I also wouldn't want to stick a kid with a name that no one can pronounce or spell, either. As far as Irish names go, it's definitely one of the easier ones to spell and pronounce, but Americans would still definitely get it wrong. I might have to just use it as a middle name...
 

Litvyak

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I don't think it does. If you learn to love yourself and accept your personality, it will naturally follow that you love and accept your name, whatever it might be. Suddenly, you'll see how they're connected, even if it felt strange to you before.
 
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