Beware of names: Validating name-based status and gender cues in Italy, Germany, and the United States

What social signals do names convey; and do researchers reliably control for them? These are the questions Alisia Bauer and Anna Zamberlan (LMU Munich) address in a joint publication in Acta Sociologica.

In a cross-national survey experiment, 900 respondents from Italy, Germany, and the United States evaluated nearly 18,000 first name–surname combinations, around 120 first names and 120 last names per country, rating each on perceived social status, gender, age, and ethnicity.

The results show that names intended to signal high or low status are indeed perceived differently, with a median gap of at least one point on an 11-point scale across all three countries, widening to two points in Germany. However, a considerable overlap between the two status groups was observed, particularly in the US. Gender was perceived largely in line with the researchers' intentions, though misclassifications were not negligible: in Germany, over 5% of evaluations assigned a male gender to female-intended names, and in the US this figure exceeded 6%. Beyond these intended dimensions, names also triggered unintended perceptions: names associated with older age or a majority ethnic background were consistently rated as higher in social status. In Italy and the US, names perceived as belonging to ethnic minorities received significantly lower status ratings than those perceived as belonging to the majority group, while this pattern was absent in Germany.

The authors argue that these intersectional perceptions pose a serious risk of confounding in experimental research and recommend that researchers either validate name stimuli carefully before use or statistically account for concomitant perceptions in their analyses. To support this, the study provides prevalidated name lists and a publicly accessible replication package.