BY NAME AND BY NATURE
Was it pure chance or a quirk of science that a crime-busting hero’s name just happened to be Mr Battman?
WAS Usain Bolt destined to be become the fastest runner the world has known because of his name? Or was it just fitting – an amusing coincidence – that the Jamaican sprinter happened to be called Bolt and bolted out of the blocks quicker than anyone else?
There is no answer to this – although for sure he made the job of headline writers that much easier (Bolt of lightning strikes twice, No one bolts like Bolt, A Bolt out of the blue, et al).
But the connection between a person’s name and how they go about making a living is the sort of discussion that has preoccupied behavioural scientists and social psychologists for, well, as long as there have been behavioural scientists and social psychologists.
Which is why they would love the story last week of Cameron Battman. Yes, he’s got a double “t” rather than one and no he doesn’t have a sidekick called Robin or drive a Batmobile but, even so, he’s a real-life “have a go” hero, who was awarded £250 by a judge for bravely disarming an axe-wielding thief and then restraining him until the police arrived.
Battman spotted 42-year-old Steven Walton cycling off with a bag full of cash that he had stolen from the Pear Deals convenience store in Hartlepool, Co Durham, and the 25-year-old welder took matters into his own hands.
Battman says: “As he approached me the axe dropped out of his coat and the carrier bag split on the floor. He picked the axe up and I thought he was going to attack me.
‘‘I disarmed him and kicked the axe away and held him on the floor. I spoke to the police and they said ‘Can you keep hold of him?’ ” He could and he did.
Walton, who had multiple previous convictions, was sentenced to 40 months in prison and Battman has now received his reward for, as the judge put it, “bravery and public spiritedness”. The judge might easily have added “…and for living up to your name”.
Or is it more the case Battman reacted as he did because of his name? In the same way, is it just by chance that one of our greatest ever poets was called William Wordsworth?
Or that a BBC weather forecast presenter on East Midlands Today and North West Tonight is called Sara Blizzard?
Or that a certain Lord Brain wrote a book called Clinical Neurology? Or that Ann Webb was one of the founders of the Tarantula Society?
Then of course there was Larry Speakes, the suitably named White House spokesman and Michael Vickers, a popular clergyman; Mark De Man, a Belgian footballer (not to be outdone by a goalkeeper called Dominique Dropsy) and Lieutenant Les McBurney, a wellknown American firefighter.
In the world of business I like the idea of a Frenchman called Bruno Fromage heading up the Danone dairy company’s UK division.
And who can resist a knowing smile on hearing that police in Cheshire, Connecticut, in the US, stopped a car being driven erratically and found marijuana and drug paraphernalia in the vehicle.
The names of the teenage brothers in the car? Gregory and Timothy Weed.
Some big brains have taken a keen interest in the science of names. The psychologist Karl Jung suggested in his 1952 book Synchronicity that there was a “sometimes quite grotesque coincidence between a man’s name and his peculiarities”.
PRESUMABLY by “grotesque” Jung meant something out of the ordinary or unexplained, unfathomable even. But then he went on to cite his fellow psychologist Sigmund Freud, whose name translates as “joy” and linked that to Freud’s so-called “pleasure principle”, which concluded that the pursuit of pleasure is the basic driving force of all humans.
So you are given a head start if your name is a joyful one.
It is only since 1994 that the link between someone’s name and their profession – or even their hobby or general demeanour – has itself been given a name. And a very fancy name it is, too: nominative determinism.
Technically it means “namedriven outcome” and the theory is that people gravitate towards areas of work or behaviour which reflect their name. Why? Possibly because people subconsciously will themselves to live up to their names. Name-calling gone mad.
Presumably this is unfortunate when your name is Burk or De’Ath, never mind names that have a sexual or vulgar ring to them.
The term nominative determinism was coined by New Scientist journalist John Hoyland, who wrote a column called Feedback.
Regarded as the father of nominative determinism, he became interested in the subject after reading a scientific paper about incontinence written by two professors – one called JW Splatt, the other named D Weedon.
He was intrigued also to find a book called Pole Positions: The Polar Regions And The Future Of The Planet had been written by a man called Daniel Snowman.
Then a few weeks later he came across a tome called London Under London and that was the work of Richard Trench.
From then on, his column in New Scientist became a depository for news about people whose “names matched up disturbingly well with their lot in life”, noted his friend Marc Abrahams, writing on a blog called Improbable Research shortly after Hoyland’s death four years ago.
There’s a danger of splitting hairs (oh, come on, let’s do so anyway) but nominative determinism should not be confused with “aptronyms”, which merely note a Pictures: IAN WALTON / GETTY, ALAMY, FACEBOOK connection between someone’s name and what they do or how they behave – without attempting to understand the science behind it.
ACCORDING to Frank Nuessel, an aptronym is the term used for “people whose names and occupations or situations (eg workplace) have a close correspondence”, as he put it in his 1992 book The Study Of Names.
Mind you, Hoyland never came close to proving his theory. No one ever will. But he concluded that people feel a “special warmth” towards their own name and this attracts them to jobs or activities that sound similar.
This is in sharp contrast to Butcher, Baker, Smith or Taylor whose trade defined their names.
Hoyland, to his credit, seemed to approach nominative determinism with a light touch.
“There is something going on here, or maybe there isn’t, but it’s funny anyway,” he once told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Hence our chuckles when we think about Margaret Court, the great Australian tennis player. Or Thomas Crapper, who specialised in lavatories. Or the former British Lord Chief Justice who was called Igor Judge. Or Francine Prose, the American novelist.
Nominative determinism? Pure chance? There’s no correct answer.
And let us hope that it does not always apply, otherwise there might have been something fishy about the Avon and Somerset Policeman interviewed on TV last week – PC Rob Banks.
Let us instead just enjoy this particular name game, this unexplained quirk. And revel in the joys of the English language.