What's in a name? Longer lives, sometimes

Black men with historically distinctive black names like Elijah and Moses lived a year longer, on an average, than other black men, according to new research examining 3 million death certificates from 1802 to 1970.

The study, co-authored by Michigan State University economist Lisa D. Cook, is one of the first to find benefits of having a racially distinctive name. Other studies that looked at current black names like Jamal and Lakisha suggest having these modern black names leads to discrimination.

“A number of studies indicate that modern black names can act as a burden, whereas our findings show that historical names conveyed a large advantage over a person's lifetime,” said Cook, associate professor in MSU’s Dept of Economics and James Madison College.

Using historical death certificate data from US states —Alabama, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina — the researchers had established the existence of a set of distinctive names given to black men, mainly in the early 20th century. Names range from Abraham to Booker to Isaac.

The current study found that having a distinctive black name added more than one year of life relative to other black males.

“A whole additional year on their lives, in mortality terms, is remarkable,” Cook said. Many of the distinctive names come from the Bible and possibly denote empowerment. Cook, who has five generations of Baptist ministers in her family, said one theory is that men with these Old Testament names may have been held to a higher standard in academic and other activities, even implicitly, and had stronger family, church or community ties. These stronger social networks could help a person weather negative events.

“I think the teachers in these one-room schoolhouses —teachers who also taught Sunday school — probably placed implicit expectations on students with these names,” Cook said. “And I think that gave them a status they otherwise would not have had.”

On the contrary, previous research has found that having distinctive modern names such as Tremayne and Tanisha has led to discrimination among job applicants, college students seeking mentors and researchers seeking federal funding. Researchers in the US, Britain and elsewhere have studied the issue.

"When people see a name that's foreign to them in their profession, implicitly they shut down, as these studies have shown," Cook said. “Then there is an extra layer of bias suggesting that this is possibly a female, poor or somehow unqualified candidate. Research has found that in the US it's associated with racial discrimination and in Britain it's class discrimination.”
Source: www.eurekalert.com