“請記住，一個人的名字，無論用什么語言說出，在那人聽來都是最動聽、最重要的聲音，”戴爾.卡耐基(Dale Carnegie)在1936年的勵志經(jīng)典《人性的弱點》(How to Win Friends and Influnce People)里說。大多數(shù)人可能確實如此——據(jù)2019年對1844名受訪者進行的一項調(diào)查，79%的人喜歡自己的名字。
Unfortunately, I am in the other 21 percent. I cringe a little whenever I hear someone say my name, and have ever since I was a child. One of my earliest memories is of a lady in a department store asking me my name and bursting out laughing when I said, “Arthur.”
不巧，我歸另外那21%。一聽到有人說出我的名字，我就會有點難堪，從小就這樣。我最早記得的一件事，是百貨公司里一位女士問我名字，我說“亞瑟”(Arthur)，她就大笑起來。
Before you judge that lady, let’s acknowledge that it is actually pretty amusing to meet a little kid with an old man’s name. According to the Social Security Administration, “Arthur” maxed out in popularity back in the ’90s. That is, the 1890s. It has fallen like a rock in popularity since then. I was named after my grandfather, and even he complained that his name made him sound old. Currently, “Arthur” doesn’t even crack the top 200 boys’ names. Since 2019, it has been beaten in popularity by “Maximus” (No. 200 last year) and “Maverick” (No. 85).
先不去評判那位女士，我們還是承認，碰見小孩起了個老年人的名字確實是很好笑的事。根據(jù)美國社會安全局(Social Security Administration)的統(tǒng)計，“亞瑟”的人氣在90年代達到了頂峰。19世紀90年代。從那以后，它的流行度就像石頭一樣墜落。我的名字是隨了爺爺?shù)模B他都嫌這個名字讓他顯老。如今，“亞瑟”都進不了男孩常用名的前200位。從2019年至今，它的受歡迎程度還不及“馬克西莫斯”(Maximus，去年是第200位)和“馬弗里克”(Maverick，第85位)。
One thing I constantly hear from people I meet for the first time is, “I imagined you as being much older.” I don’t take this as flattery, because at 54, I’m really not that young. What they are saying is that they imagined someone about 100 years old. Why? Because people actually tend to look like their names.
總是聽到初次見面的人對我說，“我還以為你要老得多呢�！蔽也挥X得這是奉承話，我54了，沒那么年輕。他們的意思是在他們想象里我應該是個百歲老人。為什么?因為，人如其名是確有其事的。
In a study last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers placed images of unfamiliar faces in front of participants and asked them to guess the person’s name from a list of four plausible-seeming names. The participants should have guessed correctly 25 percent of the time. Instead, they got it right 38 percent of the time. The researchers found similar results across eight studies.
去年《個性與社會心理學雜志》(Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)上刊載了一項研究，研究人員給受試者看一些陌生面孔的照片，讓他們從都挺合理的四個選項里猜出照片上那個人的名字。受試者猜對的幾率應該是25%，但事實上他們猜對了38%。研究人員在8項研究里都得到了類似的結(jié)果。
In case you are wondering, this fact and others make up part of an entire field called onomastics. Onomasticians, who are trained in various scholarly subdisciplines, study proper names, and many of their results are fascinating. One of my favorite onomastic studies comes from the economist David Figlio, who found that boys with more feminine-sounding names tend to misbehave disproportionately upon entry to middle school compared with boys with more traditionally masculine names. So if your son is in trouble after beating up another kid, it’s probably your own fault for naming him “Robin.” (His victim is probably named “Arthur,” by the way.)
如果你有興趣了解，這些事實屬于叫作“專名學”(onomastics)的研究領(lǐng)域。專名學家們來自不同的分支學科，他們研究專有名稱，很多研究成果都很有趣。我最喜歡的一項專名學研究出自經(jīng)濟學家戴維.費利奧(David Figlio)，他發(fā)現(xiàn)起了女孩氣名字的男生進入中學之后，比起傳統(tǒng)男性化名字的男生更有可能出現(xiàn)品行不端的情況。所以要是你兒子因為打了別的孩子惹出麻煩，有可能是你的錯，錯在給他起名叫“蘿賓”(Robin)。(順便說一句，他欺負的孩子很可能叫亞瑟。)
Another finding of note, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2002, is that people gravitate toward places of residence and occupations that resemble their own names. So, the researchers assert, a higher proportion of men named Louis live in St. Louis than would occur at random, and a lot of people named Dennis or Denise become dentists. It had never occurred to me that there were dark forces at work making me into Arthur the author. It all makes sense now.
《個性與社會心理學雜志》2002年刊載過另一個值得注意的發(fā)現(xiàn)：人們會被與自己名字相似的居住地或職業(yè)吸引。所以研究人員斷定，名叫路易斯的男性居住在圣路易斯市的比例要高于隨機分布的比例，而很多名叫丹尼斯(Dennis)或德妮絲(Denise)的人后來成了牙醫(yī)(dentist)。以前我從來沒想過是一些冥冥之中的力量使我成了作者(author)亞瑟(Arthur)�，F(xiàn)在這就全都說得通了。
One way to attenuate the impact of a name you don’t like is to marry someone with a name that somehow offsets yours — in my case, someone with a name that is a little more up-to-date. But I did the opposite: I married Ester. This was a pretty common name in her native Barcelona in the 1960s, but here in America it mostly predates World War I. To make matters worse, after we married, our first home was in Boca Raton, Fla. We were aggressively pursued by telemarketers for burial plots and Medigap insurance.
要是你不喜歡名字的某種影響，有一個補救的辦法就是跟名字與你互補的人結(jié)婚——拿我的情況來說，就是該找個名字稍入時一點的�？晌艺梅催^來了：我的妻子叫艾絲特(Ester)。1960年代在她老家巴塞羅那這是個挺常見的名字，可是在美國基本上屬于一戰(zhàn)以前。更糟的是我們結(jié)婚后第一個家安在了佛羅里達州的博卡拉頓(Boca Raton)。賣墓地和醫(yī)保補充險的各種電話推銷員對我們是窮追不舍。
I once heard that to have an aversion to a name is a condition called nomomisia. I suppose you would say I suffer from autonomomisia. Yes, I am an autonomomisist.
我曾經(jīng)聽說厭惡某個特定名字是一種病，叫厭名癥(nomomisia)。我猜你會說我得的是“自厭名癥”(autonomomisia)。沒錯，我就是個自厭名者。
Still, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Like everything else in life, it could be a lot worse. Years ago, my mother and I were talking about all this. I asked her about her second choice for my name. How about David? “David Brooks” has a nice ring to it. After all, “David” was the second most popular boys’ name the decade I was born and was also my beloved father’s name. She thought about it for a minute and said, “Well, we thought about naming you Chester.”
不過，看開一點還是很有必要的。人生里所有事都一樣，本可能還要糟糕得多呢。好幾年前，我和母親聊到名字的事，我問起當初給我起名時的備選方案。叫戴維(David)怎么樣?戴維.布魯克斯這名字挺好聽的。畢竟在我出生的年代“戴維”在最流行男孩名字里排第二，而且我親愛的爸爸就叫戴維。她想了一會兒說：“哦，我們想過叫你切斯特(Chester)�！�
You know, on second thought, Arthur’s not so bad.
這個，我又想了想，“亞瑟”也不算太差。
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