What's In A Name?

I was trying to figure out what to post, as I have not written much in a while. While I was considering this, I started absentmindedly assigning numbers to letters, and trying to figure out what I could do with these. As I am a math major, and this blog has contained a disproportionately low amount of math, sadly, I figured I would come up with something related to math to post.

Now, the first idea that came to me before the numbers and letters and math was the idea of what is in a name. I believe that many people consider this to be a first name. What stereotypes are associated with various first names? To me, the meat of the subject is in the last name, your history and what nature has given you. I must admit though that there are merits to both ideas.

So, we have what is in a name. And letters equaling numbers. We have all the necessary tools to do some interesting math.
a  b  c  d  e  f   g   h   i     j   k     l     m    n     o    p    q    r    s    t    u     v    w    x    y     z
1  2  3 4  5  6  7   8   9   10 11   12   13   14  15  16  17  18  19  20 21  22  23   24  25   26

I was considering how to approach creating an idea of using numbers to define what is in a name. Personality characteristics are to intangible to define numerically (at least at my low level of math), but maybe something like precision or accuracy. I figured, lets take a look at the likelihood that a statement someone says is correct based on their name. It must be considered that this should be less than 100% for your average name. So maybe the fraction of your first and last names would help this:

Mark / Richard=43/61=0.705 or 70.5%

Here the value of the name is defined as the summation of each of the values of the letters. So Mark = m + a + r + k = 13 + 1 + 18 + 11 = 43.

I can't tell if that is way too often or not often enough. Either way, a second test that I considered is that there are many names that this model would not follow. I thought instantly of Yao Meng, both a physics TA here at the University and an NBA player:

Yao / Meng = 41/39 = 1.05 or 105%

So this idea was not going to work. 

At this point it is rather clear that it is not letters in general that make a good name. Someone with the name Zzzzzz A would not necessarily be better than someone else. So, I decided to add another rule.

Some of the most successful people seem to have a trend of consecutive vowels in their names (especially French and Asian people). With this idea, I thought that the value of a name changes depending on vowels, which to me seem like the more powerful letters, giving definition and form to a word. So, now if two or more vowels are consecutive, you multiply them. However, a = 1 so that wouldn't positively affect the value, so let's say that if a is being multiplied, a = 2. So now:

Yao does not equal Y + a + o, Yao = Y + a*o = 25 + (2*15) = 55.

Now, simply adding the two names does not seem sufficient to determine an inherent value, as discussed above with the Z A thing. Some other manipulation must occur.

I assume that your first name is indicative of the nurture you are going to receive, and your last name is indicative of the nature you are receiving. As such, the value of first names that contain an apostrophe are deducted 5 "points". 

Let us say that the added value of your nature and nurture is proportional to the amount of valuable, positive experience you expect to gain by adulthood. However, if your nature value is greater than your nurture value, we can expect some conflict as your inherent nature, whether it be your interests or physical condition, are not good for the molding that your nurture wants.

One way I thought to deal with this is to simply divide your nature value by ten, and use that as a percentage change.

In my case, Mark = 43 and Richard = 61. I expect conflict as a result. 

43/10 = 4.3. So to reduce my nurture value, we say 43* (1 - 0.043) = 43*.957 = 41.2

Thus the quality of my experience from being nurtured is reduced by my inherent nature.

So far we have deduced how to roughly, very roughly,  determine the value of the experience you are gaining by analyzing your name. Give it a try!

I plan on continuing this train of thought, but I believe this is a good place to end before we start graphing functions related to our names.

If you made it this far, I congratulate you. This post is a large step from the norm, but I think that it is kind of fun to calculate! I will be back with more later.