NAME THAT BABY

The brainstorming and negotiating continue, but I think Jill and I have come up with some good ideas. I suppose that seeing the baby will finally determine their suitability, so we excitedly wait.

Now that I am deciding upon the name of my own child, I've found that I really do care about the "Playground Test." By that, I mean that if it's a boy, his name will not be too easily made fun of by bullies and other nasty miscreants at school. One cannot plan for every contingency, but I'll give you an example.

A colleague, whose wife is a couple of months further along than Jill, told me that his wife suggested the names Sebastian and Hunter for their unborn child. He, on the other hand, put his foot down and their third choice, Luke, won out. I agree that Sebastian and Hunter might attract some teasing, but I neglected to remind him that Luke rhymed with puke. But if one can prevent some measure of anguish from visiting upon your son in school, why not, right?

But yesterday, I stumbled upon proof that parents should be careful about their child's name in just such a manner. My master's thesis advisor Dr. David Figlio, now with the University of Florida, recently completed a research paper entitled:

"Boys Named Sue: Disruptive Children and Their Peers" (link allows you to download the paper yourself - a .pdf document)

David Figlio


David poured through detailed records and statistics for children in a large Florida school district and statistically measured the relationship between boys with "effeminate" names, their disciplinary history after 6th grade - as puberty starts to kick in and middle school introduces many new, strange kids, their own academic performance and the academic performance of their peers.

The "effeminate name" criteria is what economists call "novel": new and innovative, but not really the focus of the study. David hoped to actually measure the externality (impact) of badly behaved children on their own AND other children's academic performance. An actual measurement had never directly been done. Though anecdotally, it's a no-brainer and teachers have dealt with it since the dawn of time. But an actual number or measurement can buttress the political case for rethinking the importance of disciplinary policy and the importance of classroom environment, among other things.

So, the gist of it is, there is now empirical evidence that what you name your child is important, can affect his academic performance and the grades of those around him. So, David, on behalf of all the nervous fathers-to-be out there debating with their wives about boys' names, myself included, thank you.

And just a couple more words about David. In addition to being a bright, young economist (he's only a few years older than me) and a generous scholarly advisor, I credit David with being an exceptional father. Specifically, he has travelled around the world working as a consultant on educational policy issues for governments such as Thailand, Chile and Sweden, among others. And nearly all the while, David has opened up the world to his three young children by taking them along on his journeys, even when his kids were not yet old enough for school. This link takes you to his website. Click on the "Images" picture on the left margin to see photos of his kids in all the places they've visited, including Thailand, Italy, Alaska, and Tanzania. You can also read many of his research papers on his website. He specializes in public economics, specifically schools, academic performance, testing, funding and related issues.