T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: A girl named Sachin?

OKONOMOS/ Boys with girls' names are disruptive, at least in Florida. But not vice versa

What's in a name? Plenty says David N Figlio* of the Department of Economics at the University of Florida. If you happen to be a boy with a girlie name, like Kiran or Suman or Surjit, you are far more likely to be a disruptive little good-for-nothing than if you had a male name.

The problem seems to become worse if there is a girl with the same name in the class. Are you surprised?

Figlio also found that "boys with feminine names are eight per cent more likely to be low income (as proxied by free lunch status) than are those with names typically given to boys. This difference, however, is entirely due to the racial differences of the students."

It does not, however, tackle the other side of the coin, namely, when girls have boy names. Among the boys' names given overwhelmingly to girls "the most commonly given in the state of Florida between 1989 and 1995 were Alexis (90 per cent of the time to girls), Courtney (94), Shannon (92), Kelly (93), Shelby (95) and Ashley (99)."

It seems names were not always as sex-linked as they are now. Indeed, says Figlio, what do you about Dominique? It is one of the top female names given to boys and it calls into question the effeminacy of the name.

Why? Because one Dominique Wilkins was "among the National Basketball Association's top players at the time when the children in this study were born." I wonder what would happen if we had sudden spate of girls named Sachin?

Figlio says, "this paper proposes an unusual identification strategy to estimate the effects of disruptive students on peer behavior and academic outcomes. I suggest that boys with names most commonly given to girls may be more prone to misbehavior as they get older."

The problem, it appears, starts from the time the boys with girlie names enter middle school, at least in Florida. That is around when the testosterone begins to raise its ugly head and the fellows begin to get ribbed by friends about their names.

The late Johnny Cash had a wonderful song with a hypnotic beat about this phenomenon. Figlio reminds us of it.

"Some gal would giggle
and I'd get red,
And some guy'd laugh
and I'd bust his head.
I tell ya, life ain't easy,
For a boy named Sue."

He has analysed data in a local school district and finds that such boys also end up making the rest of the class perform badly "indicating that disruptive behavior of students has negative ramifications for their peers." The main victim is mathematics, what else?

It also turns out that even though all kids in the class start behaving badly when they have a disruptive child in their midst, the boys misbehave more than the girls.

So what should schools do? "It may be beneficial," says Figlio, "for schools to seek to determine the variables that predict future classroom disruption and either schedule classes with this in mind or actively seek to remediate potentially disruptive children before they become so."

I cannot help wondering how Figlio will fit in cultural factors into his theory. Sikhs, for example, often name their children in a unisex sort of way. I have friends called Guljit, Manjit, Ravinder and Kulwant, two of whom are men and two women and all gentle as doves.

Nor does he seem to have heard about the suffix thing, like an "�ova, as the Russians do it or with an "�i or an "�a, as we Indians like it.

*Boys Named Sue: Disruptive Children and their Peers, NBER Working Paper No. 11277, April 2005