Here's a weird one: "Every additional letter added to your name accounts for a $3,600 drop in annual salary," according to online job matching site TheLadders. What the baseline or ideal number of letters in your name should be wasn't disclosed in the study, but what seems to be clear is that in 24 pairings of proper names against nicknames, "all the shorter names earn more."
I doubt, obviously, TheLadders is asserting that a shorter name alone will guarantee you a higher pay check, but if you're a hard worker and just so happen to have a super-short name (or a long name but go by a zippy nickname), you'll tend to earn more than your colleagues with far more unwieldy names.
Weird.
Go read the full study over here.
David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as an interviewer-writer for Adult Swim, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.
