Elon's meme magic

Choose your child's name wisely

There is a 1949 science fiction novel (Project Mars: A Technical Tale) about how to build a Mars colony, and it includes this part:

Amazing, it was written by none other than Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi rocket scientist of V2 fame. He was recruited by USA in operation Paperclip, and was a key person behind America's space program success. Written only 4 years after WW2 ended, it tells us about a hypothetical Mars government form, where the leader is called "The Elon". Too crazy? Hard to believe? Certainly, but it appears to check out. I wasn't able to find the original, very obscure German version, but someone on X reportedly got a scan of the right page.

The story behind this name is a bit less impressive, after we read that Elon's father, Errol, named Elon in part after the book:

Nevertheless, just because you name your child something, doesn't make it that likely to happen. There are 1000s of American girls named Khaleesi, but I don't think any of them are going to become dragon flying queens any time soon. Similarly, there are many people with names like King who are not kings, Smith who are not smiths, and so on.

However, there is nonetheless some truth to this idea, called nominative determinism, or 'your name causes your life'. Historically, most people did not have last names. They were perhaps originally descriptors (like Erik the Red) which became fixed, some concern physical properties (White, Black, Brown, Short, Strong), or mental properties (Slick, Smart, Fair?). Depending on the cultural norms, some are just the modified name of your parent, typically father (patronyms). This is the origin of those -sen and -(s)son names you see in northern Europe, especially Scandinavia (Jensen = son of Jens, Peterson, son of Peter). There are two more interesting categories from the perspective of science, namely typological (like Kirkegaard, my mother's namesake farm) and occupational (Smith, Taylor, Miller) names.

So, we know that people called Smith had at least one ancestor who was a smith (adoptions aside). Since Smiths are strong men, are people called Smith still somewhat above average in this attribute? They should be, especially considering assortative mating. Wikipedia has a decent research summary:

In 2015, researchers Limb, Limb, Limb and Limb published a paper on their study into the effect of surnames on medical specialisation. They looked at 313,445 entries in the medical register from the General Medical Council, and identified surnames that were apt for the speciality, for example, Limb for an orthopaedic surgeon, and Doctor for medicine in general. They found that the frequency of names relevant to medicine and to subspecialties was much greater than expected by chance. Specialties that had the largest proportion of names specifically relevant to that specialty were those for which the English language has provided a wide range of alternative terms for the same anatomical parts (or functions thereof). Specifically, these were genitourinary medicine (e.g., Hardwick and Woodcock) and urology (e.g., Burns, Cox, Ball). Neurologists had names relevant to medicine in general, but far fewer had names directly relevant to their specialty (1 in every 302). Limb, Limb, Limb and Limb did not report on looking for any confounding variables.^[99] In 2010, Abel came to a similar conclusion. In one study he compared doctors and lawyers whose first or last names began with three-letter combinations representative of their professions, for example, "doc", "law", and likewise found a significant relationship between name and profession. Abel also found that the initial letters of physicians' last names were significantly related to their subspecialty. For example, Raymonds were more likely to be radiologists than dermatologists.^[100]

As for Casler's third possible explanation for nominative determinism, genetics, researchers Voracek, Rieder, Stieger, and Swami found some evidence for it in 2015. They reported that today's Smiths still tend to have the physical capabilities of their ancestors who were smiths. People called Smith reported above-average aptitude for strength-related activities. A similar aptitude for dexterity-related activities among people with the surname Tailor, or equivalent spellings thereof, was found, but it was not statistically significant. In the researchers' view a genetic-social hypothesis appears more viable than the hypothesis of implicit egotism effects.^[101]

Topological names are particularly interesting for investigating social stratification. In Scandinavia, patronyms are lower status than place names. This is known among the populace, perhaps, because Danes at least are rapidly changing away from these names. Of the top 20 most common last names, 19 end in -sen. The one that doesn't is Møller (Miller), which is not exactly high status either. If people are asked why they opted for e.g., the mother's name for their children (or themselves in marriage), they say because they don't want a name that's so common.

I have written quite a few times about how one can use last names to study the social status persistence over time, mainly based on the work of Greg Clark (who moved to Denmark to study our historical archives). In general, his findings look like this:

By checking the relative social status of people with different last names over many years (e.g. % who graduated from Oxford, or were registered medical doctors), one can determine how fast they converge towards the mean (a kind of regression towards the mean). This converge happens because of imperfect assortative mating and non-100% additive heritability of social status. By fitting a models with certain assumptions, one can determine that the rate of social status persistence at the family level is about 0.70. The use of a reliable average across many people means that randomness in life averages out, so only the underlying persistence factor is left. It turns out that this underlying social status is 70-80% persistent. Furthermore, almost the same persistence is found across time and place, whether it was medieval England, egalitarian Sweden, or communist China. Social engineering failed to achieve its goals.