What’s in a name? Possibly a life of crime.
An unpopular name – like Alec, Ernest, Ivan, or Malcolm – is more likely to spell trouble than favourites Michael, Matthew or Christopher, according to research presented Saturday at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of B.C.
“There is a positive correlation between unpopular first names and juvenile delinquency,” said Daniel Lee, an economics professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.
His study, the first to examine the link between names and crime, compiled the first names of all males born between 1987 and 1991 in a large unnamed American state…
So says a June 08, 2008 report in the Calgary Herald.
(Thanks to investigator Scott W. Langill for bringing this to our attention.)