Stuff that Leaves You Unsettled

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Ransom is the name of a CS Lewis character, though, so maybe they were just hoping he'd follow in those footsteps...

[Chimera]

Even so, those names are sick and wrong.

With so many other ways to mess up your children, you think people could at least manage to give them normal names. 

[The Lost One]

I read a book recently that addressed the impact of names on childrens behaviors. The book was "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt, Ph.d.  Such names are generally sick and wrong but Dr. Levitt did point out that one dad named his first son "Winner" and his second son "Loser".  Winner is a doing time prison and Loser is a sucessful business person. Dr. Levitt theorized that Winner assumed that he was entitled to success and his sense of entitlement was his downfall.  Loser worked hard and was successful because he didn't expect success otherwise.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

There's no correlation between names and success, or names and personality, as far as current studies can show.  The reason for that, I would venture to guess, is because different names combined with different personalities and different environments will cause people to react in different reaction from other people to the name.  Essentially, there's too many factors that effect the personality (under tabula rasa theory) during development to see a strong specific trend from just one of those factors, unless it is a very strong factor like socio-economic surroundings.

I don't think that older adolescents or adults (in the winner/loser case) would venture so far as to assume their names controlled their entitlement to that degree, that's something I could see a child thinking, but not a man who got himself into jail.  At that point, he should probably have figured out his name doesn't entitle him to anything, unless he was a complete dunce.  I think more likely Loser was ridiculed as a child, etc. so he worked hard as a form of output and vengeance.  Just like thousands of others who are told they wont amount to anything, even jokingly, and form a grudge and work very hard just to prove the others wrong.

[Archon]

Gorgon, you just contradicted yourself. You say that people who are ridiculed often work harder to prove their tormentors wrong, but that would mean that there is a practical relationship between name, or rather the connotation of a name, and the way a person interacts with other people. If something helps to define the way you interact with other people, then it could certainly affect how successful you are. I do agree with you though that it is not a predictable pattern, since there are so many other factors to be considered, but that doesn't mean that there is no correlation.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

No, what I said was there is no known correlation between names (specific names) and success or personality, meaning that there's no reason to believe people named Patrick will be a certain type of person.  Then I went on to say that you can't see a strong specific trend from just one minor factor such as a name because it is that factor combined with many other factors that make a person who they are.

Note that most the people ridiculed who work harder to prove their tormentors wrong aren't doing so because of their names (so I would imagine).  I would venture to guess there are a lot more people who are made fun of for being imperfect in other ways, especially being shy or having few social skills, than people who are made fun of because their name.    I didn't say a name can't have an effect on how successful you are, especially in an indirect way.  I said there's no correlation between names and success, and the book by Dr. Levitt (which is what I was specifically responding to) talks especially about trends between one name and all the people with that name.  A large-scale correlation does not appear, even if a person's name does have an effect on who they are, which it often does, which means that there is no correlation between names and success, or names and personality, as far as current studies can show. 

Or, more specifically, and probably more understandably, a specific name does not correlate with a specific success rate or personality according to any legitimate current study, showing now correlation between any name and the success of the person with it, or between that name and a personality type.