Your Name Spells your Success

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Category: Business Soul

Our names affect the level of success that we achieve. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reveals how other people's impressions and decision-making are influenced by the pronunciation of our names.

With the “name pronunciation effect”, individuals with "easier names to pronounce are seen in a more positive light compared to those with harder names to pronounce."

This is quite interesting because many Filipino parents have a penchant of giving their children "creative" and weird names. A few years back, Matthew Sutherland, a British expatriate, wrote an amusing article ("A Rhose, by Any Other Name") about overbearingly cutesy Filipino names like Babes and Lovely, "door-bell names" like Bing-Bong and Ding-Dong, repeating names like Len-Len and Mai-Mai, names with the randomly-inserted letter 'h' like Jhun and Ghemma, and "composite" names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary) and Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao).

The researchers found that people with easier names to pronounce were more likely to be selected for political office and job promotions. These individuals tend to have more friends than someone with a difficult name to pronounce.

[Do you agree that names affect one's level of success? Please use the comment section below.]

University of Melbourne professor and lead study author Simon Laham stated that "[r]esearch findings revealed that the effect is not due merely to the length of a name or how foreign-sounding or unusual it is, but rather how easy it is to pronounce."

The richest Filipinos in 2011 include simple names like Henry, Lucio, John, Andrew, David, Jaime, Enrique, Eduardo, Roberto, George and Tony. [See Top 40 Richest Filipinos in 2011 and 2012 World Billionaires: 6 Filipinos in the List]

Of course, in the same way that one who has no mentor does not rule out success in business, just because one has a name that sounds weird or is difficult to pronounce does not necessarily mean that one would NOT be successful. Vice-President Jejomar Binay is a testament to that.

It is nevertheless logical to say that, all things equal, someone with a better-sounding name may have an edge when it comes to promotion, among other things. Many parents send their children to good schools and expose them early to business matters to provide them a better competitive advantage. Along this line, it would not hurt to give children a competitive advantage, given the conclusion of the study, by giving them a good name. What do you think?