Does being called Rose make you look prettier?

COULD you tell whether a man is called Bob or Tim based solely on his looks?

It sounds impossible – but the name our parents give us has a lasting effect on how we present ourselves, research suggests.

A woman called Rose might subconsciously become more feminine to match her floral name, the study claimed.

Or an Elizabeth, named after the Queen, may appear more regal and serious.

The Israeli study found volunteers were able to guess the names of others with surprising accuracy of up to 40 per cent.

Scientists claim this is because men and women grow to look more like their names – subconsciously changing their hairstyles, putting on weight, smiling or frowning – to comply with cultural stereotypes.

For example, society generally expects men called Bob to have rounder faces than those named Tim, because the letters are more rounded, the authors said.

The name Katherine was also associated with more success in life than Bonnie, although the reason why was not as clear.

The researchers believe these stereotypes become a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, after finding hundreds of volunteers could guess others’ names correctly.

Participants were given a photo and four or five names to choose from, meaning there was a 20 to 25 per cent chance of getting it right. But they were correct up to 40 per cent of the time – significantly better than random chance.

And a computer presented with 94,000 faces was even better, guessing two- thirds of names correctly.

Dr Ruth Mayo, co-author of the study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: ‘We have cultural ideas about names, based on how they sound, if they have another meaning, the people we have known with that name, and famous people.

‘For example people might see a woman called Rose as a flower and expect her to be as beautiful as a flower, so she may become more feminine.

‘Someone with Elizabeth, a serious and royal name, may be expected to be serious, so she may put her hair up rather than letting it down [and] smile less.’

The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.