Out of curiosity, do any of the really successful students at your schools have cool names? As in ones that you probably wouldn’t be able to differentiate from YA book characters?
At my high school, the ASB-president-varsity-sports-captain-valedictorian-with-a-2400-SAT type of of students often had first name and surname combos that were either really unique (in a good way) or nice-sounding. I know it’s more correlation than causation, but I found it pretty interesting and was wondering if anyone else noticed this.
Well, my school has lots of Indians and Asians (although the Asians generally use white names), so we have quite a few unique names. I know a girl who got a 2400 on her SAT and she has a really unique name. I have a pretty unique name (tbh even though I’m Indian, my name isn’t even really Indian, although it is used by Indian people a lot). One of the girls who got into Harvard, Stanford, and MIT last year had a really unique name (it was a Chinese name and she had no American name); she shortened it most of the time.
@Anish14 she chose Harvard. At first she chose Stanford, but her mom wanted her to go to Harvard so she changed it, and by the time she got off the waitlist for MIT (which was her #1), she was so done she didn’t want to change which one she was going to anymore (she had already sent in the affirmation that she was going).
She was really, really smart. She got 5s on 15 AP tests, self-studied Calc BC as a freshman while taking Algebra 2 and got a 5, took Multivariable Calculus as a junior, danced competitively (she is now on the Harvard dance team), and took a really challenging courseload. She was in a prestigious youth symphony. She also did research at like, UCSD. But she got three hours of sleep a night.
^ You know, those two aren’t that far off, haha—most people at my high school had pretty “normal” names, but the students with names that sounded like they were from John Green novels and the like were the ones who were usually really good at everything.
And that got me wondering, could uncommon names make a * positive * impact as well? At my high school it seemed to, and while anecdotal evidence from one town isn’t exactly representative, I thought it was interesting.
No, the class president type people have regular names at my school, and so do the 2400 SAT people. The popular class president type people at my school aren’t the same people who get 2400s on their SAT though.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Do not list the specific name in question. These other students have given no 3rd party permission to have their names posted on this site.
@Anish14 yeah. Lol pretty much everyone has a somewhat unique name at my school (I’ve never met anyone named Mary; I think the most common names at my school are Christina and then Neha (there are five of the former in my grade, and four of the latter).
Yeah, I think I could’ve phrased the question a little better. A lot of the popular kids at my high school were the varsity captains, ASB presidents and valedictorians but that’s certainly not the case for every school out there. Maybe a better way to ask it would’ve been: ** Do the popular kids have certain-sounding names compared to the regular ones? ** For example, do the Bob Smiths and Sarah Jones of the world have it harder because their names kind of cause them to blend into the crowd compared to those with more interesting names?
And by interesting, I kind of meant the kind of names you’d find attached to protagonists in books and TV shows, but I appreciate everyone’s input! (and please, don’t actually post people’s names)
@Coriander23 When I think about a protagonist’s name, I can’t help but feel that there is either a unique first name, or a unique last name, like Huckleberry Finn and Victor Frankenstein, respectively. The attention to the name isn’t forced as it would be for a name like Bartholomew Bartholomew. It subtly attracts the reader’s attention. I found a list of literary character names that enforces that idea.
Of course, that’s just a trend that I personally saw. I know that it’s broken successfully, but I thought it was interesting that so many names are modeled like that.
@awakeningvenus - You’re right, that’s absolutely what I meant! I was having such a hard time putting what I wanted to ask into words for some reason. I thought it was really interesting too–most of the names on that list have a certain * cadence * to them, and the reader almost instinctively knows they’re a character of importance.
I’ve noticed that a lot of really successful people I know have names that follow this pattern, and I can’t help but wonder, does the name make the person or the other way around? Food for thought, I guess.
Anyway, Harvard, Stanford, and MIT… Wow! Which she she choose?