What's in a name? Maybe a job

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

What's in a name? New research shows that for some people, employment prospects could be on the line. We hear from two economists who looked at hundreds of econ Ph.D. students to find out if the ones with harder-to-pronounce names were hurt in the job market.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:07.0	There's a famous saying that the sweetest sound a person can hear is the sound of their
0:17.2	very own name.
0:18.8	And that might be true if people don't routinely butcher your name.
0:23.6	I mean, just ask some of our listeners.
0:26.8	My name is Adity Sango.
0:28.8	How do people mispronounce my name?
0:30.4	Oh God.
0:31.4	I had someone calling me Dedy.
0:34.2	My first name is Avishai.
0:37.0	People pronounce my name in all sorts of ways.
0:39.6	Avishai or Avashii.
0:43.0	My full first name is Malinipe.
0:45.9	It's 11 letters long.
0:48.0	I feel I've spent most of my life having it mispronounced.
0:51.3	My name is Benga.
0:58.3	It is spelled G-B-E-N-G-A.
1:03.3	People always say the first G like Gbanga or the second G like a J like Benga.
1:03.1	My name is Rama Nyang.
1:06.4	My first name, Rama, there are tends to be pronounced as an L instead very often.
1:12.3	So instead of Rama, you end up with Lama, which is the camel's cousin.
1:17.9	And for some of our listeners, this is more than annoying.
	...

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