The Dentist Is Called Dr Payne. Is That a Coincidence?

The term describes a personal name that matches what its bearer does, so a judge named Justice, a runner named Bolt or a gardener named Flowers all qualify. The match may be exact or merely suggestive. Collections of real examples have been assembled since the nineteenth century and circulate steadily, and a great many are verifiable rather than invented. The phenomenon is distinct from a deliberately meaningful name given to a character in fiction, which is a writer's choice rather than a coincidence.

Part of the answer is simply the origin of surnames:

• •Many European surnames were originally occupational
• •Smith, Baker, Fisher, Taylor, Carpenter and Miller among them
• •Those jobs were common, so the names became common
• •Some of the occupations still exist
• •So a baker named Baker is not a remarkable coincidence
• •The interesting cases are names that were never occupational

Psychologists have argued that people are drawn towards occupations resembling their own names, an effect connected to a general preference for things associated with oneself. Studies published in the early 2000s reported disproportionate numbers of dentists named Dennis and lawyers named Laura and similar patterns, and the authors attributed them to unconscious self-association. The findings attracted immediate attention and were widely repeated in popular writing as an established result, which is where most people encountered them.

Fiction has used matching names for as long as it has existed and the technique has its own name and conventions. Morality plays used names that simply stated what a character represented. Restoration comedy named characters for their defining vice. Dickens is the master of the suggestive rather than literal version, with names that sound like their bearers without spelling anything out. Modern writing uses the device more carefully, since an obviously meaningful name breaks the illusion, and a name that merely feels right is doing the same work without announcing it.

Subsequent analysis has been unkind to the effect and the criticisms are methodological rather than dismissive. Name popularity varies enormously by decade and by region, so comparing a name's frequency among dentists against its frequency in the general population without controlling for birth year produces spurious results. Reanalyses that control properly find the effect shrinking towards nothing. There is also an obvious publication asymmetry, since a study finding no pattern in names would not have been written up. The current position among researchers is that the effect is small at best and probably absent.

A name matching its owner's occupation is common partly because many surnames were occupational to begin with, so a baker named Baker is not a coincidence at all. Studies claiming people are drawn towards matching careers were widely repeated and have not survived reanalysis controlling for how name popularity varies by decade and region.