What's in a name? The revealing use of noms de plume in women's correspondence to daily newspapers in Edwardian Scotland.

In August 1912, a female correspondent calling herself ‘Fair Play’ wrote to the Aberdeen Free Press to remonstrate at the militant methods used by the Women’s Social and Political Union (the WSPU). She explained that she had chosen to use a pen name rather than reveal her identity for fear of retribution from local suffragettes: “I should prefer to sign my own name to this letter, but having done so some years ago in a letter to a London paper, in which I pointed out the unreason of their violent conduct, I received such vulgarly abusive postcards from some of the suffragette ‘patriots’ and ‘martyrs’ that in these days of hatchet-throwing and petrol-burning I simply dare not do so”. Helen Tollie, a local WSPU member from Ballater, wrote immediately in response; “Dear lady, Fear not our hatchets or implements of war. They will not be directed against you. You are not important enough. If you were, they would find their way to you without your help.

What's in a name?

A personal reflection on Live Ar

What's in a name?

An exploration of the use of autobiography in the work of Annie Sprinkle and Bobby Baker

What's in a Name?

Plenty. This paper analyzes two broad questions: Does your first name matter? And how did you get your first name anyway? Using data from the National Opinion Research Center’s (NORC's) General Social Survey, including access to respondent’s first names from the 1994 and 2002 surveys, we extract the important ``first name features'' (FNF), e.g. popularity, number of syllables, phonetic features, Scrabble score, `blackness’ (i.e. the fraction of people with that name who are black), etc ... We then explore whether these first name features are useful explanatory factors of an respondent's exogenous background factors (sex, race, parent's education, etc...) and lifetime outcomes (e.g. financial status, occupational prestige, perceived social class, education, happiness, and whether they became a parent before 25). We find that first name features on their own do have significant predictive power for a number of these lifetime outcomes, even after controlling for a myriad of exogenous background factors. We find evidence that first name features are independent predictors of lifetime outcomes that are likely related to labor productivity such as education, happiness and early fertility. Importantly, however, we also find evidence based on the differential impacts of gender and race on the blackness of a name and its popularity that suggest that discrimination may also be a factor.Names, Identity, Discrimination

What's in a Name?

Plenty. This paper analyzes two broad questions: Does your first name matter? And how did you get your first name anyway? Using data from the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC's) General Social Survey, including access to respondent's first names from the 1994 and 2002 surveys, we extract the important ``first name features'' (FNF), e.g. popularity, number of syllables, phonetic features, Scrabble score, `blackness' (i.e. the fraction of people with that name who are black), etc ... We then explore whether these first name features are useful explanatory factors of an respondent's exogenous background factors (sex, race, parent's education, etc...) and lifetime outcomes (e.g. financial status, education, occupational prestige, perceived social class, and whether they became a parent before 25). We find that first name features on their own do have significant predictive power for a number of these lifetime outcomes, even after controlling for a myriad of exogenous background factors. We find evidence that first name features are independent predictors of lifetime outcomes that are likely related to labor productivity such as education, happiness and early fertility. Importantly, however, we also find evidence based on the differential impacts of gender and race on the blackness of a name and its popularity that suggest that discrimination may also be a factor

What's in a name?

An exploration of the use of autobiography in the work of Annie Sprinkle and Bobby Baker