I am Always Late

Success is something that can be achieved by using own talents, skills, knowledge, luck, as well as by using a combination of many minor factors, and sometimes such factors are absolutely strange and seemingly unrelated. Actually, it is not something new that a person’s name can determine his or her destiny to a certain extent. However, could you ever imagine that the people with easy-to-say names have much higher chances to achieve professional or personal success in this life, be more healthy and wealthy, more well-thought-of, respected and reputable, as well as have lower risks of developing a nasty habit of being always late?

The findings of a study of Australian specialists from Melbourne University’s School of Psychological Sciences suggest that those people with tongue-twisters names have much tougher life and have to face much more problems of all sorts compared to those people who have easy-to-say names. Our names play a very important role in how we are perceived by the others, and if your name is Spencer, Benson or Sherman, you will be judged much more positively than those people whose names are hard to pronounce. At that, specialists are convinced that the folks with easy-to-say names are usually receiving special treatments from teachers, more promotions from their employers at work, and so on.

“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,” Dr Simon Laham, a leader of the study and an expert from Melbourne University’s School of Psychological Sciences, commented on the findings of his expert team. During the study, the specialists looked at the names and their professional or personal achievements. It turned out that those with surnames like O’Sallivan or Morten were ranked among the easiest and the most “successful” for their owners. The names of foreign origin like Loughnane, Farquharson, or Katorjevskiy, found the place among the hardest names to pronounce, thus being less positively taken.

The experts pointed on the fact that those people with difficult to pronounce names reported about their getting very stressed and dejected when the people around them fail or do not spend efforts for pronouncing or spelling their names in a correct manner. A great deal of people with foreign origin who come to or reside in other countries, are very well familiar with this kind of problem. Having not an easy-to-say name sometimes results in emotional problems, a lack of professional success and self-esteem, depression, sadness, and – being always late. Read more about the findings of this interesting study in the latest issue of the online Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.