Name and Personality: Is There a Similarity Between You And Others With The Same Name?

Abstract

Previously, researchers have determined that people tend to attribute certain personality traits with certain names. For this reason, we conducted a research study to determine whether or not a person’s name actually has an effect on their personality. We surveyed people with the given name “Ryan” and asked them to take the HEXACO personality trait, which tests for six traits: honesty, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. We averaged our sample’s results for each trait and compared them with the HEXACO medians for each trait in the general population. We hypothesized that if name indeed has an impact on personality, people with the same name would have distinctly disparate trait scores than the general population. We found that between our “Ryan” sample and the general population, there was a significant difference in scores for five of six personality traits. Compared to the general population, Ryans are more likely to be more honest, less emotional, less extraverted, more agreeable, and less conscientious. The sixth HEXACO trait, openness to experience, has no statistical significance. Because five of six traits had significance, we were able to conclude that names are likely to have an influence on personality traits.