What's in a name

We are approaching that blissful week between the end of final exams and the posting of grades. If you are afraid that you did poorly on a final or two, it may not just be the result of poor study habits: It turns out that your name may be to blame.

Supposedly, people whose names begin with the letter C or D are less likely to do well in school, according to a study reported in Yahoo! News. It's not that people with C and D names are less intelligent, but rather that people tend to be fond of their initials and therefore get less bummed out when receiving those letter grades. The conclusion was based on data from 15,000 graduate students over a 15-year period.

Strangely, the study doesn't say anything about people whose names begin with the letter F. I guess the researchers couldn't find any student that was okay receiving that grade.

The researchers also found that baseball players whose initials include a K – which is commonly used to denote a strikeout – are more likely to strike out than other players. For this part of the experiment, the researchers studied the data of 6,000 baseball players who were in the Major League within the past 93 years.

Frankly, more research has to be done on the topic before I'm willing to believe it. While there may be flaws in the data – such as its small sample size – it’s still an interesting proposition. I’m interested to see if the researchers will follow up this experiment and collect more samples.

The same study also found that people are attracted to words and objects that have to do with their names. The example provided in Live Science is that a man named Jack may be more likely to move to Jacksonville than a man named Phil, who may end up in Philadelphia.

By that logic, I should be fond of a former basketball player, a brand of almonds and a country in the Middle East. But sadly, I can't seem to pick out anything associated with my name that I particularly like.

However, I do usually get along with other people named Jordan, as well as other people whose names begin with the letter J.

Maybe those researchers are on to something.

But please, C and D named students, feel free to prove this study wrong and do well on your finals. Granted, most of you are probably done by now, but it’s worth a shot.

As for the rest of you, I guess you have nothing to worry about – at least until grades are posted.