Bad News for People With Hard-to-Pronounce Names

(Photo: Fady Aziz)




(HT: Cyril Morong)

Norman Briffa

Laham in the Maltese language means meat. I wonder what effect a surname hasif it represents something edible!

Iljitsch van Beijnum

I guess I'm screwed then.

Ieuan Owain Roberts

Me too!

Richard Simon

What the study doesn't address is the type of name that should be easy to pronounce but somehow isn't. My own, for instance. It should be an easy name to get: two vowels, each surrounded by a "normal" consonant - no z's, no x's, no y's, no silent letters and you'd think that people would properly pronounce it straight off. But believe it or not, more people get it wrong than get it right!

So, do people with names that should be easy to pronounce but somehow aren't discriminated against?


Yes, people like Zach Galifianakis never succeed.


At least not to the extent of universal name recognition: who's Zach Galifianakis?

Cyril Morong

I feel lucky that no one has ever had trouble pronouncing my name. But I still feel the pain of those who are less fortunate than I am


I learned this simple truth the hard way, having a literally translated Russian name that is spelled "Yevgeniya". My first year in America, I realized that I was never called on in class, did not get response to my resume. I started introducing myself as "Jane" (a less-literal translation of the diminutive form of the same Russian name) - and viola, I instantly got better response. Many years later, I still go by Jane.

Steve S.

Is this related to a correlation or some form of causality? How do you tease out some of the minority/non-dominant culture disadvantages that people already have with these (more ethnic sounding) names?

Griffin E

The relationship is probably endogenous.

Don't high powered, successful parents (who have the means of providing all of life's advantages) normally name their kids some high powered name?

Is it not true that parents who have enough foresight to consider the ramifications of a name from it's inception are probably going to provide superior opportunities than those who don't?

This study is probably measuring the effect of parenting rather than a name.

robyn goldstein

I never thought of my name as a bit difficult to pronounce until a teacher of mine referred to me as Robyn Goldstein (like Einstein) and I found myself having to correct her on the matter of pronunciation (American wise). That teacher (Harriet Zuckerman) is responsible for my thinking about how advantage accumulates, but I always thought of it (as not merely a matter of the inheritance of a problem) but as real educational advantages gained and earned in childhood and becoming compounded and further compounded (like a snowball a/effect). Thus, were it not for the advantage of an appreciation of the classics acquired at Columbia, I would not be where I am now. The problem at elite schools seems to me to be that your teachers are focused upon advancing the discipline and the students benefit from gaining access to discoveries first hand, so the students have to be sufficiently independent to fend for themselves. At other schools, the focus is on students and on teaching. I needed both and got it for myself by going through two grad. programs so I have no regrets.

I do think that there is a baseline of an education that we all need in order to be happy and to lead happy, productive and successful lives that meet our individual needs. . Met an orthodox jewish girl who was being home schooled and spoke to her about it yesterday. Turns out, she was thrown out of a few schools before and one school for reading a book while the teacher was supposedly teaching. She agreed that she was difficult and preferred to work on her own. Wants to be a musical therapist and plans to go on to get a college education for that. I am certain that no one (not even a so-called " liberal college professor") will dissuade her from her dream. To suggest otherwise, is to be naive.


Sheetal Dube

I totally relate to this study. I have an Indian name and have been working in the US for seven years. When I first came here I had low expectations of people pronouncing my name. So I just lived with it. But later I realized that it was becoming a barrier for me to build rapport with others, especially in the business environment. My clients were hesitant to pronounce my name and sometimes avoided taking it - that to me was a missed opportunity.

To find out if it was just me facing this issue, I participated in a StartupWeekend contest. All most all 90 people agreed that there are these awkward moments of not knowing how to pronounce someone's name. In a globally connected world, it seemed like solving this one small problem could help me impact a lot of people.

So I left my job and started A application that allows you to record your name and share it with people you interact with. I hope Audioname will level the playing field for name pronunciations :)


Eric M. Jones.

But I wonder if certain names also confer better treatment.

Reservation for Mr. and Mrs. Grubbs...
Reservation for Mr. and Mrs. Bonaventura...

Life isn't fair. My last name is so common I have to use Smith or Brown when sneaking into a hotel with a lady I might not be married to....


This is great research. Immediately I went and looked up the names of the senior executives at my company (a very recognizable tax preparation company). All of the C-level executives have very common first names and very pronounceable surnames. I wonder how many other companies have that trend.


Daniel Kahneman talks about this in ch 8 of his newest book.


What about in academia, where name recognition matters? Is it a disadvantage to be "J. Smith" because nobody will remember that you were *the* J. Smith who wrote that seminal paper on nominative determinism? T. Vougiouklakis wouldn't suffer from that problem, but they might still lose out compared to A. Crowhill whose name is easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and yet also rare.

When working in large collaborations, is it an advantage to be I. Bond rather than P. Yock, so that you come first in alphabetic author lists?

Iljitsch van Beijnum

MW: good point. People may not know how to pronounce my name but on the other hand I'm all over the first page of Google results for either my first or last name and I can always just use my first name as a user name.

Jon Visaisouk

Hi everyone,

Luckily now there is a tool for people like us! It is called an Audible Name Tag and it pronounces your name for others thru emails, digital docs, websites, etc.

Angela Dawn

My last name is phonetically spelled, but people still trip up over it due to the length. My last name is 12 letters and 5 syllables long. It is my married last name, before I had a 3 letter 1 syllable last name. Every time I have to take 2 minutes to spell my last name over the phone, I wonder if I should have kept my maiden name.

But my name hasn't held me back in any way. Ironically I still had to spell my maiden name because it had 2 very common spellings, but it only took 2 seconds of my time.

Leszek Leszczynski


However, I recall being in Paris one time, in their adorable science museum, seeing (to my delight) that the Polish language deserved a mention in the "hardest languages" alley, being illustrated with "Przest?pstwo" - good luck, English speakers.