by Jonah Berger
But might it be less random than it seems?
To find out, Wharton professor Eric Bradlow and statisticians Alex Braunstein and Yao Zhang and I decided to examine a domain that everyone knows at least something about.1 First names.
* * *
Cesar had been hoping for a boy. Praying, actually. Sometimes twice a day. He and his wife, Rebecca, already had twin four-year-old girls, and there was only so much pink he could take. Sure, the girls played soccer and piano in addition to taking ballet lessons, but it would be nice to have another guy in the house. Another Y chromosome to balance out all the Xs.
So he did everything he could to make it happen. He started with the easy stuff. Picking out shades of blue for the baby’s room and wearing boxers rather than briefs.
Soon he began following all sorts of pseudoscience recommendations. He drank more coffee and encouraged Rebecca to eat “boy” foods like red meat, fish, and pasta. He consulted a Chinese gender chart to help them decide when to conceive and asked Rebecca to drink cough syrup with guaifenesin to loosen mucus (don’t even ask). He even tried consulting a psychic.
It was a harrowing first four and a half months.
Eventually, they went in for an ultrasound. They stared at the pictures, looking for any hint of the gender.
Then, the doctor uttered the words Cesar had been waiting for. It would be a boy.
Cesar and the girls were ecstatic. There would be another boy in the house. But then came the tougher decision. What to name him.
Rebecca came up with a long list of possibilities: Eli, Julian, and Michael. Jason, Daniel, and Liam. Gavan and James and Holden and Tucker.
She had been a teacher before becoming pregnant with the girls, so every name had an association. Gabriel sounded nice enough, but one of the worst kids she ever taught was a Gabriel, so that was out. Holden was fine but there were too many running around school the past few years.
The name also had to fit with the baby’s sisters’ names, Parker and Allie. Something that had a comparable feel. A similar number of syllables and a little more new sounding than traditional.
Each time they thought they had reached a solution, someone close to them would shoot it down. “ ‘Michael’ sounds too old-fashioned,” Rebecca’s mom complained. “ ‘Liam’ sounds too new-agey,” a relative grumbled. From then on, they kept all new ideas to themselves.
Finally, in early 2006, Keegan was born.
* * *
Names, like other words, can be broken up into a series of basic sound parts called phonemes. Each phoneme stands for a perceptually distinct unit of sound in a particular language. Take the name Jake. It starts with a /j/ (as in words like “joy” and “jam”). Next comes an /ā/ sound (“ay” as in “lay” and “make”) and it ends with a /k/ (as in “take” and “bake”).
Phonemes may seem like letters, but there are some important differences. There are only twenty-six letters in the English language, but over forty phonemes, in part because the same letter can make different sounds in different words.
Try saying words like “cat” and “laugh” a couple times. In both words, the letter a makes an “ahh” sound.
Now trying saying words like “Jake” and “maid.” Same letter a, but here it sounds more like “ay” than “ahh.”
Something similar happens with the letter e. In words like “end” and “friend” the letter e makes an “eh” sound, while in words like “be” and “key” it makes an “ee” sound. In the name Jake the e is silent.
Different letters can sometimes even make the same sounds. In words like “kit” and “rack” the letter k makes the “k” sound, while in words like “cat” and “car” the letter c is making that same sound. Try switching the c in “cat” to a k (i.e., “kat” as in Kit Kat) and the word still sounds pretty much identical.
The name Keegan is six letters long, but it is composed of only five phonemes. It starts with a hard /k/ (as in “kick” and “kaleidoscope”), then moves to an /ē/ sound (“ee” as in “feet” and “leech”), followed by a /g/ (as in “gas” and “gill”), an /a/ sound (“ah” as in “fat” or “hat”), and ending with an /n/ (as in the name Nancy or “nice”).
* * *
For Rebecca and Cesar, Keegan was the perfect name. It hit all the requirements. Strong sounding but not too long. Modern enough but not obviously so. Close enough to Rebecca’s maiden name to pass the family lineage along.
When Keegan got to kindergarten, though, his teacher noticed something unusual. There wasn’t another Keegan in class, but there were an awful lot of kids whose names sounded similar. Going through the class list there was Keegan, Kevin, Kimberly, Keely, Carson, and Carmen. Out of twenty kids, six had names that either began with K or started with a hard-K sound. Why did so many children have similar-sounding names?
The answer, it turns out, was Hurricane Katrina.
* * *
What’s in a name? From Emily and Eric to Apple and Blue Ivy, everyone has one. Our names not only follow us our entire lives, they also influence the lives we lead. First names affect everything from how attractive people seem to whether they receive callbacks from potential employers.2
So it’s no surprise that parents agonize over the right moniker for their child. Prospective mothers and fathers spend hours searching through naming books, combing through blogs, and vetting possibilities.
But what makes a particular name sound, well, good?
Associations clearly matter. Just as Rebecca avoided Gabriel because it reminded her of someone she didn’t like, the particular person a name conjures can have a big impact on choice. That Eva sounds old-fashioned can be good or bad depending on your preferences. Parents avoid names like Adolf for obvious reasons.
But when we analyzed how the popularity of different names changed over time, we found something interesting.
Through their role in providing social security numbers, the U.S. Social Security Administration keeps track of what names parents give to their kids. For over 125 years, they have records of how many people with different names were born each year. How many Jacobs and Susans and Kyles and Jessies were born in 1900, 1901, 1902, and so on. More than 280 million births and over seven thousand different names.
Some names (like Luke and Mia) have become more popular over time, while others (such as Charles and Elizabeth) have become less popular. Some names (Paula or Tess) increased in popularity for a period, only to decrease again. And some names (Jack or Laura) peaked twice, increasing and decreasing and increasing and decreasing again.
When we sifted through all the data, we found that hurricanes influenced how people named their children. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, for example, almost 10 percent more babies were born with names beginning with a K sound (compared to the prior year). After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, names that started with a soft “ah” sound increased 7 percent. That’s thousands of babies getting certain names, just because a big hurricane happened to hit.
On the surface, this doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone name his child after a hurricane?
Hurricane Katrina was one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. It caused more than $100 billion in property damage and killed more than 1,800 people.3 Who would want their child associated with such a lethal natural disaster? It would be like naming your son Stalin and hoping no one made the connection.
This intuition is partially right. Popularity of the name Katrina itself decreased by almost 40 percent after the storm hit. The first association most people had with the name Katrina right after the hurricane occurred was the storm itself, so many people shied away from giving that name to their kids.II
But that wasn’t the only effect Hurricane Katrina had on naming patterns. While the hurricane decreased the popularity of the name Katrina itself, it increased the popularity of other names that began with the same phoneme or hard K sound. Use of the name Keely increased by 25 percent. Fifty-five percent more babi
es were given the name Kaelyn. And names like Kinsey, Kate, Carmine, and Cora all became more popular.
And the reason has everything to do with the value of moderate similarity.
* * *
When picking a name, parents think a lot about how popular the name is. While some parents like unique names (Moxie Crimefighter, anyone?), most want a name that is a little more, well, standard. Too popular, though, and people may avoid it.
But beyond the name itself, what about the popularity of other names?
Sure, lots of baby Keegans running around might affect whether parents choose that name, but what about baby Kevins and Calebs? Could the fact that these names start with the same hard K sound affect whether parents decide to name their boy Keegan?
It turns out that the answer is yes. Names are more likely to be popular when similar-sounding names have been popular recently.
People are more likely to name their children Morgan or Maggie when there are more baby Michaels and Madisons. And more likely to name their kids Lisa or Lyle if Lexi and Lance have been popular recently.
Hurricanes have a similar influence on naming patterns because they influence how often we hear certain names, and thus sounds.
When a particularly damaging storm like Katrina hits, people hear the name Katrina again and again. The nightly news talks about when Katrina will make landfall, people at the grocery store are chatting about how much havoc Katrina has wreaked on the country. Again, and again, people hear the name Katrina and the sounds that make up that name. And while this echo chamber drives parents to avoid the name Katrina itself, it also leads them to give their babies similar-sounding names.
* * *
Analogous patterns occur in a variety of domains.
Some cars look more prototypical, or similar to other cars on the market. The Volkswagen Jetta, for example, looks a lot like many other cars out there. It has the same standard-looking grille and lightly sloping headlights. One could easily confuse it with a Toyota, Nissan, or a number of other available options.
Other cars look more different. The Volkswagen Beetle looks unlike anything else on the market. It has round bug eyes, a dome-shaped roof, and a grille that almost smiles at you when you look at it head-on. It’s actually built on the same chassis as the normal-looking Volkswagen Golf and has the same technology, but its appearance is quite distinct.
These differences in visual appearance predict sales. Whether looking at economy or more premium cars, and even controlling for things like price and advertising, models that look more prototypical, or similar to other cars on the market, sell better.4
Similarity increases evaluation (and sales) for the same reason that mere exposure works. Just as the more we see something, the more we like it, the more we see something, the more we like other things that share similar features.
* * *
Imagine you’re asked to participate in an experiment regarding how quickly people can make judgments of new or novel shapes.
You’ll be shown a number of drawings, presented at rapid speeds. After a drawing is flashed briefly, it will be replaced by a background of black, white, and grey dots. The background will give you a place to focus your eyes before the next picture is flashed. The pictures will be flashed so quickly that they may be difficult to see, but do your best.5
The first drawing you see is something like the following:
It’s actually a Chinese character, but your job is not to guess what it means, just to answer how much you like it. (If you happen to speak Mandarin, just focus on the shape’s visual appeal.)
On a scale from 1 to 100, where 1 means you don’t like it at all and 100 means you like it quite a bit, how much do you like the drawing?
You only get to look at the image for 5 milliseconds, or approximately a honeybee’s wing flap, before being shown something like this background picture to cleanse your visual palate:
Then, just a second later, you’re shown another drawing. How much do you like this one?
The drawings are shown so rapidly that you don’t have time to process them in depth. They just seem like abstract shapes whizzing by.
After seeing a number of these drawings, you move on to the second phase of the experiment. Here you are again shown drawings, but now they show up for slightly longer, around one second.
How much do you like this one?
Without your realizing it, the drawings in the second part of the experiment are a mixture of three types of shapes. Some of the drawings are Chinese characters you were shown during the initial phase. They went by too fast for you to realize you’ve seen them before, but they are repeats all the same.
Another group of drawings are novel Chinese characters. They have the same structure as the first set, but you weren’t shown them in the initial phase.
The third group is made up of random polygons. Multisided shapes like a rhombus or a pentagon.
Thus some of the shapes are old (the Chinese characters you’ve seen), some are new but similar (the Chinese characters you haven’t seen), and some are new but different (the polygons).
When scientists conducted a similar experiment, they found two things. First, exposure influenced liking. People liked shapes they had seen previously, even though they didn’t realize they’d seen them. And they liked those previously seen shapes more than the random polygons they hadn’t seen before. Just like the women in the psychology class over the course of the semester, the more you see something, the more you like it.
More remarkably, this boost in evaluation also spread to the new but similar items. Seeing one set of Chinese characters made people like other Chinese characters more, even if they hadn’t seen those specific characters previously.
And it wasn’t just something weird about Chinese characters. The researchers found the same results if the initial shapes shown were random polygons instead. Seeing one set of polygons not only made participants like those polygons more, it made them like other polygons that they hadn’t even seen.
The more you see something, the more you like similar things as well.
* * *
Part of the reason similar things look or sound better is familiarity. If you’ve seen something before, it’s easier for your brain to process. The mind doesn’t have to do as much work to figure out what it is, and this reduced effort generates a positive feeling that we interpret as familiarity.
The lure of the familiar has evolutionary benefits. It helps children bond with their caregivers, guides animals toward plants that are safe to eat, and helps spouses stay together through mood swings, dirty clothes on the floor, and other bumps in the road.
Imagine every time you encountered something, you had to figure out if it was safe. Whether it is good or bad, positive or negative. Is that person in your house your spouse or someone trying to rob you? Is that thing in the fridge safe to eat or poisonous?
Simple actions we don’t even code as decisions would become arduous. Eating cornflakes for breakfast wouldn’t just be habit, it would be a life life-and-death decision. You’d have to pop one flake in your mouth, and then wait to see what happened before eating any more.
Humans and other animals evolved a mechanism that reduces this effort. If we’ve encountered something before, particularly recently, it becomes easier to process. Whether it’s a person, food, or kitchen utensil, less work is needed to figure out what it is.
This ease of processing, in turn, is coded positively. It’s the warm glow of familiarity.
Importantly, this warm glow doesn’t just affect things we’ve actually been exposed to. It also extends to things that share features with what we’ve seen or heard previously.
Someone who looks like someone you know seems more familiar because they have a similar haircut or facial structure.6 Keegan sounds better when you’ve heard the name Katrina a lot recently because they start with the same hard K sound. These things look or sound familiar because they share common features with what we’ve seen or heard
before.
This liking of similar things helps us deal with the variation that permeates everyday life. People don’t look exactly the same every time we see them, and neither does food. Someone may wear a different shirt or style their hair a different way.
So, for a “seen-before” decoder to be useful, it has to be able to handle that variation. Even if the person we saw this week doesn’t look exactly like the best friend we saw last month, we need to be able to code both of them as familiar. Otherwise each time we saw something would be like seeing it for the first time.
Liking similar things is also useful from an inference perspective. If you’ve eaten a certain berry one hundred times and never gotten sick, it’s likely that a similar-looking berry is safe as well. If you’ve interacted with someone one hundred times and they’ve always been nice to you, it’s likely that someone who looks similar (and thus might be related) might also be friendly. Liking similar things thus provides another shortcut to judgment that makes life easier.
Familiarity, though, is only part of the story.
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
Every so often, pollsters conduct surveys to rank U.S. presidents. Companies or media outlets compile data from academic historians, political scientists, and public opinion to see who had the most positive effect on the country. Just as Consumer Reports might rank car seats, these surveys weigh achievements and leadership qualities, as well as faults and failures, and spit out a ranking of the best and the worst presidents (or at least good and less good).
Dozens of high-profile rankings have been performed over the past fifty years, but certain names often bubble to the top. Famous presidents such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln consistently rank high on the list. Along with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, these high-achieving leaders had a significant influence on the course of history.