Groundbreaking new research has revealed the role your baby's name might play in shaping their facial features as they grow up.
Choosing your child's name is one of the first, and perhaps one of the biggest, decisions you can make as a new parent. There's so much choice out there, from unique baby names to beautiful-sounding baby names - and the pressure has just ramped up as there might be more to a name than we first think.
According to new scientific research conducted by Reichman University’s Arison School of Business and the Hebrew University, a person’s face will evolve over time to reflect their choice of name.
To get to this conclusion, the study's researchers asked a selection of adults and nine to 10-year-olds to match pictures of adult faces to their names. They found that many were able to correctly guess which face matched which name, with more of the participants managing to do so than could be mathematically attributed to chance.
However, less participants could match photos of children's faces to their names, leading them to suggest that faces morph as children grow to better reflect their names.
They then turned to tech to further corroborate their findings. A 'machine learning system' was presented with a database of names and faces, with the programme revealing that adults with the same name looked 'remarkably more similar to each other than faces of adults with different names.'
But why does this happen? According to lead researcher Dr. Yonat Zwebner, it's all to do with the 'social stereotypes' attached to certain names.
“Our research highlights the broader significance of this surprising effect — the profound impact of social expectations," he said. “Social structuring is so strong that it can affect a person’s appearance. These findings may imply the extent to which other personal factors that are even more significant than names, such as gender or ethnicity, may shape who people grow up to be.”
It does make sense when you think about it. Humans are shaped by many things and develop traits thanks to their environments, like the 8 personality traits people who grew up in a big family are said to have, or those of adults who were lonely children. So why shouldn't our features also be affected? Who knows, perhaps choosing a 'successful' baby name or a scientific space-inspired baby name really can give your newborn a better chance at climbing a certain career ladder.
