Psychological research shows that when it comes to letters of the alphabet, people tend to like their own initials, perhaps because of a sense of ownership. This phenomenon is called the name-letter effect. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Name-Letter Effect”
Welcome to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, I have a question for you about letters.
Okay.
I’m going to give you three different letters, and I just wonder which is your favorite.
Letters of the alphabet.
Letters of the alphabet.
Got it.
Yes.
Okay.
V, as in Victor, L, and G.
Oh, G, of course.
G.
Naturally, that’s the first letter of my name and my son’s name.
Oh, it is, indeed. I didn’t even think about your son’s name.
Yeah.
And what about the letter R?
How do you feel about that letter?
That’s okay.
That’s fine.
I’ve always liked the shape of the R and the leg of it.
Okay.
Why?
I’m leading up to the name letter effect.
Oh, the name letter effect.
I did it, didn’t I?
You did indeed.
The name letter effect is the tendency of people to prefer letters that are in their name, especially initials.
Yeah.
Like in your case, G.
And I have to tell you that this is an actual thing.
Yeah, it’s been proven.
Yeah, a lot of psychological research on this going back to the 1980s when this Belgian researcher was looking into it.
But it works for me, too.
I mean, you know, my name is Martha, and I like the letter M so much that I cannot tell you the number of times when I’ve been filling out forms that give you only the options for male or female.
I’ve checked M.
I have.
I have been drawn to that letter and actually checked it and I still have to stop myself from checking M rather than F.
And I think it’s because I’m just drawn to that letter.
Yeah, it’s funny.
I have some rationalizations for why I like G, but I bet you’re right.
I bet it’s because it’s the first letter of my first name.
But also in some typefaces, the cursive G is gorgeous.
It’s this swirly, swoopy thing with descenders and loops and all kinds of things.
It’s gorgeous.
Well, hey, the M is really beautiful.
Yeah, it can be, right?
Yeah.
But, you know, I was wondering, too, if guys named Frank have the same problem that I have with the M and the F.
If they check the F.
Yep, my name begins with F, check.
This is really a thing.
You introduced me to the name letter effect.
And I started reading up on it, and there’s all this fascinating research.
For example, they have found that when people are making donations to disaster relief, if their first initial is the same as the first initial of, say, a hurricane like Katrina or something like that, they’re more likely to give.
What?
We don’t know if that’s because they feel guilty somehow.
But psychologists think that it has to do with the fact that we tend to be invested in things we own.
And we feel ownership of our names and the letters.
Right.
And the truth is, when kids learn to write, their own name is often the first thing they learn to write.
And the first letter is the first thing in their name they write.
So it’s a deep lesson about that letter.
And I know this sounds ridiculous.
I was really, really skeptical, but there’s all kinds of information online about the name letter effect.
It’s a thing.
So everybody can Google the name letter effect and find out more.
Mm—
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