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ABSTRACT. Characteristics connoted by first names were explored in 7 studies. Four factors were identified: Ethical Caring, Popular Fun, Successful, and Masculine-Feminine (Study 1, N = 165). Men's names connoted more masculine characteristics, less ethical caring, and more successful characteristics than did women's names (Study 2, N = 274). Nicknames connoted less successful characteristics, more popular fun, and less ethical caring characteristics than did given names (Study 3, N = 289). Androgynous names connoted more popular fun and less masculine characteristics for men and more popular fun, less ethical caring, and more masculine characteristics for women than did genderspecific names (Study 4, N = 378). Less conventionally spelled names connoted uniformly less attractive characteristics (Study 5, N = 145). For men only, longer names connoted more ethical caring, less popular fun, more successful, and less masculine characteristics (Study 6, N = 620). More anxiety and neuroticism were attributed to those with less common names and more exuberance was attributed to those with more attractive names (Study 7, N= 137).
Key words: attractiveness, impressions, names, personality, psychopathology
THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF NAMES has been an important variable in the study of psychological reactions to, or characteristics of, individuals with different names. Typically, name attractiveness has been described with global variables of liking, preference, or desirability (Busse & Seraydarian, 1978, 1979; Erwin & Calev, 1984; Garwood, Cox, Kaplan, Wasserman, & Sulzer, 1980; Harari & McDavid, 1973; West & Shults, 1976).
The semantic differential technique (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957) has been used as an alternative to global assessments of name attractiveness and has provided more differentiated assessments of reactions to names. In this approach, names are rated on the evaluation (good-bad), activity (active-passive), and potency (strong-weak) factors of the semantic differential (Buchanan & Bruning, 1971; Lawson, 1971, 1980, 1986). The Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) Emotion Model (Mehrabian, 1995) has also been used to obtain differentiated assessments of impressions conveyed with a first name (Mehrabian, 1992) and to characterize emotional qualities projected by product names (Mehrabian & de Wetter, 1987).
The PAD model is related to the semantic differential, with pleasure-displeasure as the emotional counterpart of stimulus evaluation, arousal-nonarousal as the correlate of stimulus activity, and dominance-submissiveness as the opposite of stimulus potency. In this approach, the model provides general...