Avoiding Low-Status Baby Names
| 24 January 2012 | Filed under Baby Names, Boy Names, Studies |
Name researcher David Figlio says that adults of low socio-economic status tend to give their babies low-status names, and that low-status names put children at a disadvantage in school.
How do you spot a “low status” name? One way is to look for extraneous exotic consonants. Figlio says:
The higher the Scrabble score of the name, imagine the exotic consonants: X, J, Q, K, Z. It’s extremely rare for college graduates to give a child a name with two high point letters. High school drop-outs are 30 times more likely to give a kid a name with two high Scrabble point consonants. For example, the name ‘Alexander.’ A parent who is a high school drop-out is dramatically more likely to spell that name Alexzander. So the x/z combination in the middle of the name.
Source: How Your Name Influences Your Success
Wow. My husband’s cousin, who did graduate from high school but then dropped out of her dental hygienist program, named her first son Jakob and her second one Jaxson. Wow.
This does not surprise me at all.
What about Jacqueline? Surely that’s not a low-status name…
Good point about Jacqueline. Outlier, I guess.
Generalizations like this leave out foreign names that originate in languages where X, J, Q, K, Z aren’t so “exotic.” For example Aziz Ansari father is a Gastroenterologist. But even if you flip it around to traditionally English language names… Barbara Walters’ daughter is Jacqueline and J.K. Rowling has a Mackenzie.
Don’t forget Jack, Jake and Zack.
I think the key word in the above is “extraneous” (or perhaps “creative”).