In high school, a friend and I had noticed that several of the people we had to learn about in class had names which were oddly apropos of the accomplishments for which they were famous, and so we started to compile a list. At the head of the list was Robert Boyle, who studied the inverse relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of an ideal gas at a fixed temperature. Another name on the list was Alexander Graham Bell. (“You rang?”) I don’t remember the rest of the names, but of course the list had to include Isaac Newton (new ton) and Albert Einstein (one stone), who had both worked to develop a universal theory of gravitation. (The latter two may have been a bit of a stretch.)

We came up with a joke theory that a scientist’s name may subconsciously influence his or her choice of subject to study.

It turns out that this theory has a name: it is called nominative determinism, and was apparently (i.e., according to Wikipedia) coined by New Scientist, whose writers had noticed the same phenomenon. Toby Cubitt makes light of this theory, and of the similarity between his own surname and the word “qubit” (quantum bit, the fundamental unit of information in quantum information theory), on his web site, which has the clever domain name of dr-qubit.org.

In Quirkology, Wiseman describes research conducted by Brett Pelham on “how surnames may influence choice of occupation”, which “may at last provide an explanation for an effect that has fascinated psychologists for decades: Why does a surname so often match the bearer’s chosen occupation?” The book lists several examples collected by Lawrence Casler of academics working in fields associated with their surnames, and some by New Scientist of a more general nature.

I had no idea that this phenomenon “has fascinated psychologists for decades”, but I had been collecting my own specimens since high school. I don’t have the complete list any more, but I do recall several of the names.

My favourite example is probably A. N. Prior, a logician who pioneered the study of tense logic, also known as temporal logic. What else was a logician with a name like that going to study?

A rather more famous example is William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor which revolutionised electronics and gave rise to Silicon Valley. (He would subsequently go on to shock the public with his unpopular views on eugenics.)

An example that I came across in my graduate studies is mathematician Caroline Series. However, her research area seems to be geometry, rather than, say, integer sequences, which would have been more appropriate. However, I had learned of her through reading her paper, “The Geometry of Markov Numbers”, for Jeff Shallit’s course on Formal Languages and Number Theory, and so I know that she has studied at least one integer sequence. (Incidentally, Shallit’s middle name is “Outlaw” — what would the theory of nominative determinism predict about him?)

There’s a famous Canadian marine biologist named Boris Worm, whose name comes up quite frequently in discussions about overfishing. He heads the (hilariously named, in my opinion) Worm Lab at Dalhousie University… which doesn’t study worms. According to Quirkology, “a disproportionate number of marine biologists are called Dr. Fish”. I guess Dr. Worm must get a lot of inappropriate attention at marine biology conferences.

The operation to lengthen a certain male body part was apparently pioneered by a surgeon named Dr. Long. (This is probably the only fact I have ever learned from spam that I can actually recall.)

Moving away from science, there’s sprinter Usain “Lightning” Bolt, holder of the world and Olympic records for the 100 and 200 metre sprints. With that surname, the nickname is almost redundant.

The recently retired bishop of Hong Kong is Joseph Cardinal Zen, although with a surname like that, you’d expect him to be a Buddhist monk. (Yes, I realise that it’s a different character in Chinese.) The Philippines formerly had a Cardinal Sin, who was the archbishop of Manila. He was probably a blast at parties.

With his surname, it’s no wonder that Donald Trump (Anglicised from Drumpf) owns a number of casinos. And while I suppose that this may not exactly be a case of nominative determinism, it’s rather fitting that Bill Gates’ company would have a flagship product called Windows.

An example that I had noted in high school was singer Celine Dion, whose job was arguably to sell CDs. (This is related to her initials rather than to her surname, but it is nevertheless a data point in support of nominative determinism.) A similar example is Florian Paul Klämpfl, the author of Free Pascal.

Another artistic example from Canada is playwright Raymond Storey, one of the writers behind the Iron Road TV mini-series.

The name of my pets’ veterinarian is Dr. Boa. I’m not sure what they think about him, but he probably has an anguiform alt-mode.

Finally, I have to mention one interesting counter-example: someone whose name would be absolutely perfect in one profession, but works in a strikingly unrelated one. That would be Cherri Pancake, professor of software engineering at Oregen State University, and head of the Pancake Research Group… which doesn’t study pancakes.

While writing this post, I came across some articles related to nominative determinism that I found interesting. According to “Names really do make a difference”, from the Guardian, girls with “feminine” names were less likely to study “masculine” subjects such as mathematics and physics after a certain age. And Slate has two excerpts from the book Freakonomics, the first dealing with “white”- and “black”-sounding given names, and the second with the relationship between given names and perceived socioeconomic status.

– davinci 11741

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