Thursday, January 29, 2009

Thinking about a name for your child? Read this first.

I am reading this interesting article, here is the relevant part.

Boys in the United States with common names like Michael and David are less likely to commit crimes than those named Ernest or Ivan.

David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania compared the first names of male juvenile delinquents to the first names of male juveniles in the population. The researchers constructed a popularity-name index (PNI) for each name. For example, the PNI for Michael is 100, the most frequently given name during the period. The PNI for David is 50, a name given half as frequently as Michael. The PNI is approximately 1 for names such as Alec, Ernest, Ivan, Kareem, and Malcolm.

Results show that, regardless of race, juveniles with unpopular names are more likely to engage in criminal activity. The least popular names were associated with juvenile delinquency among both blacks and whites.

You can read the rest here: http://www.livescience.com/culture/090128-names-crime.html

So what does this mean? What if everyone named their child Michael? What will happen to Tom Cruise's or Gwyneth Paltrow's children, will those become criminals?

My children have the following names: Christian, Catherine and Nicholas (and no, Catherine and Nicholas are not named after Nicholas II and Catherine the Great

I think I am safe :-)

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