When we are born, our fathers and mothers give us a name. Many times they are names that are popular at that time or that mean something in particular for those people. The name becomes the way to identify, when we present ourselves we say how we call ourselves and in our identity card is our name.
So our name is something quite important at a social level, to live and interact within a group of people. However, we never imagined that our name would also have some importance at the anatomical level.
Recently, a group of specialists demonstrated this. Our name gives shape to our face and some regions in particular adopt the same form in those people who share the same name, however incredible it may be.
My face according to my name
The team of specialists reported that people with the same name also share some common stereotypical features. In one of the experiments, a group of people had to choose from a list which they thought was the name of an unknown face and they guessed right 35% of the time. This would seem to indicate that, in spite of not knowing a face, something in him indicates to us what his name could be.
In another analysis, the team used an algorithm that also managed to guess the names of each face. Thus, a total of 12 studies were carried out and all obtained similar results.
In turn, in one of the experiments, Israeli people managed to guess the names of Israeli people from their faces and the same in French people. However, at the time of asking the Israeli people to guess the names of French people, the results were not good and vice versa.
This suggests that there is a cultural limit to the relationship between the face and the name.
Same name, same face
The algorithm reported that people with the same name often have similar features around the eyes or mouth. You can practically draw a structure that repeats itself in the face of all those people who have the same name, be it Fernanda, Fabiana, Nicolás or any other name.
In fact, not only the structure matches, you can also observe the same expressions on the faces. According to Zwebner, one of the scientists in charge of the study, this may be because people are using their facial muscles to create the same appearance according to the name. Each person is born and receives a name, then begins to behave and to move their facial muscles according to their name.
Or maybe it's a coincidence ...
The team of specialists also went into the possible explanation that the results were a coincidence. When the names were chosen in the experiments, the choice may have been random and without taking into account the popularity of each name. Then, of the chosen names, perhaps several were not really popular and this compromised the results.
Then, the results would not be showing that the face appeals to a name, but that we are good at recognizing the most popular names for certain people. For example, for an Asian person we would hardly choose the name Angus.
Anyway, the relationship between the name and the structure of the face is real and perhaps this is an indicator that we should take into account that choosing a name for our children could influence them not only at a social level but also at a physical level.
Sometimes I wondered about the relevance of Name and the person, but now from the excerpts of different studies from the teams of scientists, it becomes clear that "There's Something in a Name".
Sounds a little opposite to that famous shakespearean statement....."What's there in a Name?"Great Post @let-it-be,
Isn't it?
Thanks for providing this great read.