Choosing a baby name is one of the hardest responsibilities parents face, but the results of a 2017 study suggested it might come more naturally than people realize.
Before I got pregnant, I already knew exactly what I would name my daughter. Then I found out I was having a boy. And, for some odd reason, I’d never thought about boy names before. But, when our son was born, the name we chose just … fit. It’s hard to explain, but I can’t imagine my son going by any other name.
Depending on how common your name is, it’s not really unusual to meet another person with the same one. It turns out you share more with them than just a name, though. The reason your parents chose your name is likely the same as the reason their parents chose their name, which can lead to some pretty interesting encounters.
A study found that if you share a first name with another person, there’s a chance they could also be your doppelganger.
Names can tell us a lot about a person. If you’ve ever met someone and thought their name was just the perfect fit for them, there may be a scientific reason why. In the study, published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers concluded that people do tend to pair names with faces that they think of as matching.
To prove this, they showed participants a face and gave them five different name options for each. They accurately selected the matching face and name approximately 35% of the time.
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That’s a relatively high percentage, and Cathy Mondloch, a psychologist from Brock University in Canada, agreed there might just be something to it. When asked about her thoughts on the research, she said, “Random chance would be 20%. I found that quite compelling.”
She continued, “Parents influence our face because we’re genetically related and they pick our names, too. I think a big component [of our appearance] is going to be from genetic inheritance, diet, and stress.”
Even a computer algorithm confirmed the hypothesis.
The scientists created their own algorithm to determine what features those with the same name share. According to the computer analysis, people with the same name have similarities around their eyes and mouth. And, similar to the human study participants, the computer was given a face with two possible names and was able to guess the right one 60% of the time.
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There are some expectations attached to different names that have to be taken into account, though. Yonat Zwebner, one of the authors of the study, said, “We already know from previous research that names have stereotypes. For example, prior published studies show that in the U.S., you will evaluate a person named Katherine as more successful than a person named Bonnie. You will evaluate a person named Scott as more popular than Herman. Moreover, we know that people imagine a Bob to have a rounder face compared to a Tim.”
Mondloch acknowledged that people choose names for a lot of different reasons, and it’s not always based on appearance. (After all, if a mom picked a name while she was pregnant, before she ever even saw the baby, it couldn’t possibly be based on their face.) Still, she thinks the evidence is noteworthy. “The phenomenon is there, I do think,” she said.
A more recent study proposed a similar but slightly different idea known as the ‘face-name matching effect.’
This study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024, actually sought to give further credence to the belief that someone’s appearance can influence their name. Instead, researchers came away with a new idea. Their work demonstrated that a person’s appearance might actually shift to better fit their name in a sort of “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
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Obviously, a person’s name can give you insight into their culture and background, but people also tend to make snap judgments based on whether they consider someone’s name to be likable. That’s unfortunate news for all of the Karens out there, and proves just how small-minded we can be without even trying, since people rarely pick their own names.
It’s important to remember not to judge anyone too harshly over a name they were given at birth. But if you’ve ever seen someone and thought, “She looks like a Jessica,” research explains why. Meeting someone who shares your name means you might just share a face, too.
Liza Walter is a freelance writer who has appeared in HuffPost, BRIDES, Bust Magazine, Ravishly, and more.
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