Comments on: What’s In A Name?

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:12:07 +0000

post hoc ergo propter hoc. Maybe the strange names and the jail time are both results of some other cause (*cough* being born in a ghetto *cough*) rather than the monicker causing the criminality.

By: bobo Mcfadden

bobo Mcfadden — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:43:45 +0000

Deleted racially offensive comment.

By: Eneils Bailey

Eneils Bailey — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:49:07 +0000

You addressed my point in your update.
I have seen these studies over the years and the only thing that changes about them are the names. They come up with slight variations, ..middle name..being known by first and middle name..Jerry Lee. The only thing it convinced me of is that that some names are out-of-date.

My only exception, if you ever had a number instead of a Proper name. Mister 666, doing 10 to 20 at Leavenworth. That's not good.

By: Rick Almeida

Rick Almeida — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:58:19 +0000

Seems to me that "unusual" first names probably correlate reasonably with criminality because they're a proxy for class. Similarly, didn't Leavitt & Dubner do a chapter on girls' names in Freakonomics?

By: Eric Florack

Eric Florack — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:37:17 +0000

It seems that there are several factors which correlate with incarceration rates, which the original article overlooked. I would suspect that if you looked different demographic group, they would tend to give their children different names.

Mmmphf. I've long held that the issue is cultural. Min-Culture, Micro-culture, what have you. Understand... Those that adopt the majority culture, tend to do better in the world. It's that simple. For good or ill, that's the nature of things. Thus, it's not the name, per se'. It's the cultural group who would place such names, and it's values. For clarity: We're not talking race, here, we're talking about culture. To exemplify this, take Clarence Thomas. Thomas Sowell, etc. Does anyone suppose they'd have had a hope in hell of going to the levels they have, assuming they adopted cultures that would issue a name a name like Ahamad, D'Ante, or Rakeem, for example, instead of what they had?

By: McGehee

McGehee — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:25:11 +0000

Relatedly, I posted in October 2005 about Nicolas Cage naming his son “Kal-el.” While I refrained from Cash references, Kevin McGehee did not.

Actually that was Eddie Thomas, of the erstwhile One Good Turn blog. I wonder what Eddie's up to these days?

By: Roach

Roach — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:13:29 +0000

At least two of those names are clearly more common among blacks--Tyrell and Malcom--and that undoubtedly has more to do with this than anything. Not too many white kids named LeBron or Tyrese or whatever ridiculous names become fashionable among ghetto blacks in the seventies. Blacks are jailed at 4-5X the white rate. And they have more stupid names than whites more often.

By: The Agitator » Blog Archive » Saturday Links/Open Thread

The Agitator » Blog Archive » Saturday Links/Open Thread — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:42:24 +0000

[...] I resemble this study. I just decided to write about crimes instead of committing them. [...]

By: Trumwill

Trumwill — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:58:59 +0000

One thing that some people do is to give their kids a common first name and a more unique middle name. As they grow older, a lot of people will switch depending on their preference.

By: DavidL

DavidL — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:13:58 +0000

Correlation and causation are above the paygrades of journalists, race baiters and politicians.
From the article:

The Kalist-Lee study also touched on baby girl names, noting that previous research showed a baby gal given the name Allison is seldom the daughter of high school dropouts — and that, on the whole, the less schooling they have, the more likely parents are to give their kids unpopular names.

It seems that there are several factors which correlate with incarceration rates, which the original article overlooked. I would suspect that if you looked different demographic group, they would tend to give their children different names.

May preference would bo give a child a common name, let him know that he viewed by the character his his achievments and my his name.

By: Furhead

Furhead — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:41:12 +0000

As usual, the professor and journalist show little evidence that they know the difference between correlation and causation.

With regards to the listed names: I don't really see what is oddball, girly, or strange about several of them.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:14:43 +0000

Naturally, my thoughts turned to Johnny Cash.