When reading about names, you’ll invariably read of a study done by psychologists John w. Mcdavid and Herbert Harari, which supposedly “proves” you’d better give your child a popular name if you want her to do well in school. The more you think about it, the more worrisome this pronouncement may become. After all, what exactly is a popular name? No one really knows. The fact is, name fads shift often quite dramatically from year to year.

Let’s look at this study closer to see what was actually found. MacDavid and Harari asked eighty elementary school teachers to grade short paragraphs written by fifth- and sixth- graders. The essays were all on the topic ” What I Did All Day Last Sunday.” Supposedly, the only difference in these “comparable” essays was that four names on the tests (David, Michael, Lisa, and Karen) were “popular” among the teachers, whereas the other four names ( Elmer, Hubert, Adelle, and Bertha) were ” unpopular.” Papers by Michael or David received a full grade higher than those by Elmer or Hubert. And Karen and Lisa were given a grade and a half higher than the supposedly outcast, unpopular Bertha.

But there are major problems with this study if you take it as serious “proof” (as do many authors of popular articles and books about names) that you’d better give your child a familiar, “popular,” or socially “desirable” name if you want her to do well in school.

First , one of the so-called undesirable names Adelle actually received the highest grade of all. This finding, if reported at all, is generally skipped over with the lame excuse that the teachers probably considered the name Adelle “scholarly” and “academic.” But the fact that Adelle did get a better grade than the popularly named kids leaves the often-drawn conclusion that kids with uncommon or out - of - vogue names do poorly in school open to question.

Second, what if this study which has been cited adnauseum as “proof” against unpopular names was, in fact flawed? Suppose Lisa’s essay really was subtly better in some way than Bertha’s, and Lisa’s higher grade had little, if anything, to do with her first name. Writers who report this study seldom bother to tell you that the essays were not the same. David wrote about “the store,” Michael about “Tarzan,” Elmer about “The Anniversary,” and Hubert about “Kites.” Adelle wrote about “shopping” and Lisa about “Walking the Dogs.” Bertha ’s topic was ” Planting Seeds” (hardly the liveliest subject).As researchers Louisa Seraydarian and Thomas V. Busse point out in The Journal of Psychology, not only is it possible that the essays weren’t comparable, but the teachers in the McDavid-Harari study also weren’t given any specific criteria for grading the essays. The vaguer and more unspecified a task, Drs. Seraydarian and Busse note, “the more likely it is that irrelevancies (e.g., first names) might affect the task.”

Third, to be accepted as a scientific “fact,” a study has to be reproduced and the same results found by other teams of scientists. Yet in 1981 when Drs. Seraydarian and Busse,then at Temple University, tried to duplicate the McDavid Harari findings, they couldn’t. In the Temple University study which involved 60 children’s names, 10 essays, and 180 teachers popular or unpopular names had no good or bad effects on the grades fifth-graders received. Though the children’s names were prominently displayed on the papers, many teachers later admitted they hadn’t even noticed them. In short, no psychologist can say with great certainty that you should call your little boy David or Michael (as opposed to Hubert) if you want him to do well in school. Until scientists prove that a child’s first name can seriously affect what grades he receives, it seems wisest just to choose the name you like best.