Day 5 — What’s in a Name?
Freakonomics is not the study of weird people. The word originates from a book in 2005 by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, describing the philosophy and economics behind events most of us will come to experience: parenting, crime rates, names, and more. It tries to explain how incentives are the principle root of economics…
After watching this video on freakonomics, I found that in a study by Dr Sendhil Mullainathan (professor at Harvard) the name of job applicants actually affects their chances of getting that job due to the ethnicity their names come from. He sent 5,000 identical resumes in Boston and Chicago, except half of them were given white-ethnicity names (e.g. Greg) and the other half black-ethnicity names (e.g. Tyrone). Calculating the number of callbacks there were for both kinds of name, it was found that those with black-ethnicity names were 33% less likely to get an interview than somebody with a white-ethnicity name. Also, the average time it takes for a white person to find a job is 10 weeks, whereas for a black person it is 15.
This is additionally lightly supported by an article I read, which claims that you are favored more if your name:
- Is easy to pronounce
- Is common
- Sounds white (e.g. Monica or Christopher)
- Uses a middle initial
- Sounds noble
- Is short, or has a short nickname (e.g. Tim)
Personally, I do believe in freakonomics because it is not the same as conspiracy theories. It involves evidence-based research and still looks at economic topics in a more behavioral view than traditional. These facts may need more explaining to do than the fact that a name changes everything, but it doesn’t mean it is not something to look into and change in our society.
My name is Nerea. If you are from a Spanish-speaking country you would know how to pronounce it, as it is not really an uncommon name. However, I have grown up in London where it is not as known and the pronunciation is a little different, and many pronounce it in very different ways. My parents say they found my name on the TV news one day, and that it means ‘mine’ in a dialect from North of Spain. They wanted my name to be unique, although judging by the extremely common names my younger siblings have I would say unique does not mean easy!
