Spare a thought for parents-to-be who are agonising over what to name their little bundles of joy. Because, according to new research, it does indeed seem that your name can affect your face. Eventually.
The inspiration for the new research was a finding dubbed the ‘face-name matching effect’. It refers to the phenomenon where people seem to be able to look at a person’s face and then identify their name from a list of options with surprising accuracy – better than if they were simply guessing.
This raises a couple of possibilities. Either, parents see their infant’s face and then give them a name that matches it in some way. Or, our names affect our appearance, so that we end up resembling our name in a way that observers can detect.
A team of Israeli researchers tested these two explanations in a series of studies in 2024.
In one, they asked participants to match the faces of adults and children with their correct names. The participants achieved better-than-guesswork results for the adult faces, but struggled when it came to matching the children's faces with their names.
These results suggest that we gradually come to look like our name over time, rather than simply being given an apt name at birth.
Another of the studies used machine learning to assess the similarity of the faces of people who share the same name versus those who don't.
This showed that adults with the same name exhibited enhanced facial similarity, but this was not true for children who shared the same name. This is consistent with the idea that we come to resemble our names over time.
But could our names shape our facial appearance? The researchers think that people probably internalise stereotypes associated with their name and, over the years, they act in ways that alter their appearance to fit their name.
For example, take a name like ‘Tyler’ that has masculine connotations in some cultures. A boy given this name might internalise these assumptions and live up to them, adopting sports and outdoor activities – his name might even give him confidence in his social interactions.
In turn, his lifestyle and confident facial expressions could slowly sculpt a ‘Tyler-like’ athletic-looking face and jawline.
At the same time, other people may act on the stereotypes invoked by our names, influencing the experiences we have.
For example, if a teacher noticed a link between a certain name and a disruptive nature, the might show prejudice towards a child with that name, which in turn could give the child a negative view of school.
These explanations are consistent with prior research showing your name can affect your experiences.
For instance, people with a less popular name (such as Kevin versus Alexander, according to a German study from 2011) are less likely to be successful in online dating; or to receive help from a stranger (according to another German study that used Cindy and Chantal as unpopular names, and Sophie and Marie as popular ones).
There’s even research that suggests having a rarer name is linked with increased odds of ending up in a more unusual career.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Luke Gillespie, Sunderland) 'Does your name affect your physical appearance?'
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