How the name you give your baby can change the way their face looks

DOES your baby look like their name? Scientists say by the time they reach adulthood, there is a good chance they will.

What they mean by this is that people seem to grow into the facial features that society associates with specific names.

Psychological and Cognitive Sciences

The team enlisted 9-to-10-year-old children and adults, who were asked to match faces to names[/caption]

Chances are your baby will end up looking so much like an Olivia or Henry that when they get older people will be able to guess their name by just looking at a photo, according to a paper published in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences. 

“Social structuring is so strong that it can affect a person’s appearance,” Dr Yonat Zwebner, who led the study, explained.

Previous research has found that when people are shown a stranger’s face they pick the right name about 35 per cent of the time.

But, until now, why this is the case has been unclear. 

Some experts suggest that parents choose a baby’s name based on what seems fitting for the baby’s appearance. 

Others believe that the process is the other way around and that over the years a person’s face changes to match their name. 

In their new research, scientists from New Reichman University, in Israel, set out to determine which process it is. 

The team enlisted a group of 9-to-10-year-old kids and adults to match faces to names. 

The findings revealed that the participants – both children and adults – correctly matched the adult faces to their names. 

However, when it came to matching names with children’s faces, the accuracy of their associations dropped considerably.

In the second part of the study, the researchers fed a machine-learning system of images of human faces and their names. 

An analysis of the faces revealed that those of adults with the same name were significantly more similar to each other. 

In contrast, the computer found no similarity among children with the same name.  

They said people looking like their names was a self-fulfilling prophecy – a psychological phenomenon where if we believe something will happen, our behaviour can unwittingly make it come true.

CHOOSE WISELY

Overall, the researchers said the findings suggest that people’s faces gradually conform to the social stereotypes linked with their names.

These stereotypes – good or bad – can arise from associations with well-known celebs or the cultural connotations of names, such as those that come from references to places and religion.

For example, a study by the same researchers published in 2017 found that people are more likely to imagine a person named Bob having a rounder face than someone named Tim.

“We believe these stereotypes can, over time, affect people’s facial appearance,” Dr Yonat said.

In the new study, the team concluded that although children do not look like their names yet, adults who have lived with their names longer do tend to look like their names.

“These results suggest that people develop according to the stereotype bestowed on them at birth. 

“We are social creatures who are affected by nurture.

“One of our most unique and individual physical components, our facial appearance, can be shaped by a social factor, our name.”

 So the next time you’re picking a name, choose wisely – your little one’s future self might just thank you for it!