Passage 3:
Parents often agonize over what to call their children. It can feel like a test of creativity or a way to express their own personalities through their offspring. But what many parents might not fully realize is that the choice they make over their children’s names could play a part in shaping how others see their child and ultimately the kind of person their child becomes.
      At a basic level, our names can reveal details about our ethnicity or other aspects of our background, which in a world of social bias carries inevitable consequences.   11   These consequences should not be taken lightly, but that’s not where the influence of names ends. Even within a single culture, names can have certain connotations in terms of their meaning, and can be seen as appealing or unfashionable and disliked. In turn, these features of our names inevitably affect how others treat us and how we feel about ourselves.   12   This was most likely because disliking their name contributed to their lack of confidence.
      In terms of how names affect the ways we’re treated by others, consider a German study in which users of a dating site were asked whether they would like to follow up with potential dates on the basis of their names.  13   New research also conducted in Germany found that participants were less likely to help out a stranger with a negatively rated name, like Cindy and Chantal, as compared with strangers with names rated positively,
like Sophie and Marie.
      Other recent work has similarly hinted at the harmful consequences of a having an unpopular or negativesounding name. The Institute of Psychology in Beijing cross-checked the names of hundreds of thousands of people with their risk of having been convicted of crimes. They found that even after controlling for the influence of background demographic factors, people with names seen as less popular or having more negative connotations were more likely to have been involved in crime. You could see this tendency toward criminal behavior as a proxy for a person having low agreeability.   14  
      While a less common name may be disadvantageous in the short-term, increasing the risk of rejection and lowering your likability, it could have advantages over the longer-term by engendering in you a greater sense of your personal uniqueness. A new study found that having a rarer name was associated with increased odds of having a more unusual career, such as film director or judge. Early in life, some people may derive a sense ofunique identity from their relatively unique names.   15   This appears to be somewhat reminiscent of socalled “nominative determinism” – the idea that the meaning of our names influences our life decisions.       Names can have these consequences because they can affect how we feel about ourselves and how otherstreat us. Since a good or bad name has the potential to produce good or bad results, it is suggested that parentsshould try all ways to give their baby a good name in terms of their own culture. 
【題組】11.
(A) A study from the 2000s found that, even after controlling for family background and general dissatisfaction with life, people who didn’t like their own name tended to have poorer psychological adjustment. 
(B) This sense fuels a distinctiveness motive that drives them to find an unusual career path that matches their identity. 
(C) This is consistent with the notion that having a negative-sounding or unpopular name sets a person up for social rejection and an increased risk for developing a disagreeable personality. 
(D) American research conducted in the wake of the 911 terror attacks found that the exact same resumes were less likely to attract interviews when attributed to a person with an Arabic-sounding name as compared with a white-sounding name. 
(E) It is observed that people with names considered unfashionable, such as Kevin, were more likely to be rejected, as compared with people with more trendy names, such as Alexander.