A person's surname can influence their career, experts claim
A person’s surname can influence their choice of career, experts believe.
Scientists are exploring the theory that people are drawn to certain trades and professions based on the connotations of their surnames.
The phenomenon can be observed among famous figures such as the World champion sprinter Usain Bolt or the 18th century poet William Wordsworth.
However, serious research is now being dedicated to the concept – known as nominative determinism – to explain why it occurs.
New Scientist magazine coined the term after observing that the subject matter of a series of science books and articles bore relevance to the authors’ surnames.
John Hoyland, the magazine’s feedback editor, said: “A reader wrote in to tell me that they’d come across a paper on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology which was written by J W Splatt and D Weedon.
“I had noticed, as it happens, on the same day in the office, a book on the arctic called Pole Positions: The Polar Regions and the Future of the Planet, by Daniel Snowman.
“These two things went together in my mind and I thought there’s something going on here.”
Research is now being undertaken in search of an explanation for the phenomenon. A paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has concluded that people are disproportionately likely to “choose careers whose labels resemble their names”.
The paper entitled Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions cites the disproportionate number of dentists called Denise or Dennis as an example of the trend.
Authors Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg and John Jones concluded that the phenomenon occurs because people “prefer things that are connected to the self (for example, the letters in one's name)”.
專家認為，一個人的姓氏會對其職業選擇產生影響。
科學家正在探討的理論是，人們會根據自己姓氏的寓意被特定的行業和職業所吸引。
這一現象可以從一些名人身上觀察到，如世界短跑冠軍尤塞恩?博爾特和18世紀的詩人威廉?華茲華斯。
不過，科學家現在對這一概念進行了嚴肅認真的研究來解釋為什麼會發生這種現象，並稱之為“姓名決定論”。
《新科學家》雜誌注意到一系列科學書籍和文章中的主題多和作者的姓氏相關聯，從而造出了“姓名決定論”一詞。
雜誌的反饋報告編輯約翰?霍伊蘭德說：“一個讀者寫信到雜誌來告訴我，他們在《英國泌尿學雜誌》上看見了一篇有關大小便失禁的論文，作者是J W Splatt（與‘濺潑’splatter相近）和D Weedon（與‘撒尿’wee相近）。
“碰巧的是，就在同一天上班期間，我注意到一本關於北極的書《極地位置：極地地區和地球的未來》作者是丹尼爾?斯諾曼（雪人）。
“這兩件事在腦中疊加在一起，於是我想，這裡面一定有什麼奧秘。”
目前科學家正在進行研究，以找到能解釋這一現象的答案。一篇發表在《個性與社會心理學雜誌》上的論文得出結論說，有相當多的一部分人傾向於“選擇名稱和自己名字相近的職業”。
這篇論文題為《為什麼蘇西在海岸邊賣海貝：隱含的自我中心和重大的人生決定》，其中為了證明這一趨勢援引的一個例子是，有相當多的一部分牙醫名字叫Denise或Dennis（與“牙醫”dentist相近）。
該論文的作者佈雷特?佩爾漢姆、馬修?麥仁伯格和約翰?瓊斯得出結論說，發生這一現象是因為人們“偏愛那些和自身（如自己名字中的字母）有關的事物”。
Vocabulary:
come across: 偶然碰到或發現
implicit: 內含的；含蓄的
egotism: 自我中心