Chapter6 阅读笔记 Perfect Parenting之二 孩子的名字对ta的未来有什么影响

第六章继续育儿的话题——取名字。

这一章对我启示最大的不是名字重不重要，而能提出这个问题。这个问题从表面看起来太微不足道了，其实不然。我是无论如何提不出来，因为看起来太其貌不扬。

Fryer是个年轻的黑人经济学家，他研究的方向“黑人为什么在成就上不如白人”，他愿意终其一生寻找答案。

Fryer的研究数据量大的惊人——数据包括从1961以来出生的每个小孩，1600万份统计数据。包括姓名、性别、种族、出生体重、父母的婚姻状况、邮编、支付医院帐单的方式，教育水平等等。

“Fryer went looking for the answer in a mountain of data: birth-certificate information for every child born in California since 1961. The data, covering more than sixteen million births, included standard items such as name, gender, race, birth-weight, and the parents’ marital status, as well as more telling factors about the parents: their zip code (which indicates socioeconomic status and a neighborhood’s racial composition), their means of paying the hospital bill (again, an economic indicator), and their level of education.”

复杂的数据证明了一点，那就是黑人父母和白人父母给孩子取名表现出巨大的不同出。

从名字的不同引申出一系列的数据分析：比如哪些黑人父母会给孩子取怪异的名？哪些黑人父母会给孩子取典型的黑人名子？Top20黑人白人女孩和男孩名字各是什么？60年代最受欢迎的名字和90年代最受欢迎的名字有什么变化？教育水平高的白人父母取什么样的名字？教育水平低的白人父母给孩子取什么样的名字等等有趣的问趣。

我想以后看美剧的时候可以多关注下名字背后意义。

言归正传，孩子的名字对ta的未来有影响吗？

孩子的名字其实反应了父母是什么样的人。

由于东西方文化的差异，西方的分析方法可能并不适合我们。但是不可否认的是，孩子的名字或多或少在某种程度上反应了父母的教育背景，进而影响孩子的发展。从孩子出生的那一刻，孩子的名字寄托着父母对他们的期望。

“What the California names data suggest is that an overwhelming number of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be. The name isn’t likely to make a shard of difference. But the parents can at least feel better knowing that, from the very outset, they tried their best.”

学一点英文

1. Many parents seem to believe that a child cannot prosper unless it is hitched to the right name; names are seen to carry great aesthetic or even predictive powers.

hitch这个词用的蛮生动。

2. Or would she have wound up in trouble even if her mother had called her Chastity? 

wind up 

最终沦落到；最终落得；(以…)告终；If you wind up in a particular place, situation, or state, you are in it at the end of a series of actions, events, or experiences, even though you did not originally intend to be.