What if someone told you they didn’t want to date you because they don’t like your name? As shocking as it may seem, research psychologists at Humboldt University in Berlin are saying that the study they recently conducted proves that certain names are more likely to garner attention from prospective UK date partners. The study gathered statistics after analysing the activity of 200,000 profiles, and cooperating with 47,000 participants to get an idea of which names are attractive.
After painstaking mathematical analysis the results are in – the most popular males names ended up being Alexander, Mark, Jacob, Max, and Peter. The least popular male names were Kevin, Justin, Marvin, and Dennis. To say that these names were unattractive to some people would be a gross understatement. The name Alexander gained a more than 100 percent increase in responses over the name Kevin, and one participant even went so far as to compare the name “Kevin” to an acquired disease, saying that “Kevin sounds more like a diagnosis!”
So what is it about the name Alexander? Has Alexander the Great left that much of a lasting impression on society, or is there another less extravagant reason behind the attractiveness of this name and others that were found to be successful in the study. Researchers say that based on other studies they conclude that certain names are less attractive because they invoke connotations of certain types of behaviour. In addition, people are less likely to be attracted to someone with a foreign name.
What about female names though? Girl names that were the most well-taken included Hannah, Charlotte, and Emma, while the least appealing female names for dating in UK and other parts of Europe were Mandy, Jacqueline, Chantal, and Celina. Based on other similar studies, people dating in UK are more likely to be interested in someone that has a familiar name.
The names Jacqueline, Celina, and Chantal are all indicative of different ethnic backgrounds, so this may explain why they did not do so well on one of Europe’s most popular dating sites. If, however, these name s were used on another dating site in a different country, like UKDate.com we’re inclined to believe that the result would have been different. To make sure the results were as accurate as possible the researchers made sure to only list names and ages within the profiles.
