New research has found that people tend to use first names to assess another person's age, personality and work performance.
The study, led by Leonard Newman at Syracuse University in New York, revealed that some people perceive female names as warmer and less competent compared to male names.
Names like Hannah, Melody and Mia were associated with high warmth and low competence, while names like Howard, Lawrence and Reginald were linked to high competence and low warmth.
A total of 500 college students were asked to rate 400 popular male and female names from the last 70 years. The researchers used the results to determine which names are associated with certain qualities like age, competence and warmth.
Among the questions asked in the form was: "Imagine that you are about to meet Samantha. How competent/warm/old do you think she is when you see her name?"
"A whole lot of research shows that even though our beliefs and feelings about people can be very complicated, warmth and competence are the most basic elements of our impressions of others," said Newman, according to Daily Mail.
"At some primitive level, the most information we need about the people we meet is 'friend or foe?' and 'does this person have the ability to help me or mess with me?'" he went on to say.
Some names associated with both warmth and competence include John, Mark, Sarah, Stephen, Thomas, William, Grace and Daniel, the Daily Mail reported.
Among the names that were perceived as both cold and incompetent were Tracy, Cheyenne, Erin, Dominic, Larry, Crystal, Vicki and Alvin.
The findings also revealed that some names are associated with age. People with names like Betty and Bruce are often perceived as older than those named Brittney or Brad.
"If you give your child a fashionable name for the time, it might date them," Newman said, as reported by New Scientist.
"The only way around it is to choose a name that never seems to go out of style, like David or Michael," he suggested.
Previous studies have suggested that people tend to have biases based on other people's names. Research conducted in the U.S. in 1973 found that teachers were more likely to give favorable grades to students with names that were popular at the time.
Another U.S. study found that job applicants with "white" names like Emily were more likely to be hired than those with "black" names like Lakisha even though the applications were identical. Those with unusual names such as Ajax, Atholl, Magestic and Tangerine tended to be viewed less favorably when it comes to job applications, another study has shown, according to New Scientist.
