Name

Another topic that Stephen Levitt spent quite some pages was the change in the parents' choice of name for their boys and girls.

I shall not go through his idea here. Suffice to say the choice of name for our children does reflect our value and wish on them - I realized this as soon as I entered the secondary school and was exposed to a wealth of different names.

But that's for our Chinese name only. At least amongst my generation, English name of a person is usually his (or her) own choice.

In other words, at least amongst people of my generation, the English name reflect what he or she wish to be, or what kind of person they are.

For example:

• A difficult person usually has a long and complicated name.
• Aggressive and fame-seeking people tend to have a name starting with "A".
• More humble people would choose to have their name beginning with "B". (Ironically, they are often aggressive subconsciously, because they are more aware of the difference between A and B.)
• Other subconsciously aggressive people would choose a name beginning with "Z", for obvious reasons.
• People who choose to have a simple name (for example, John or Peter) tend to be friendly and easy going.

I shall not elaborate further.