> Almost a third of naturalizing immigrants abandoned their first names by 1930 and acquired popular American names such as William, John or Charles. [...] Widespread name Americanization prompts the question of whether it had an impact on migrants’ economic success. Figure 1 provides a preliminary answer to this question. Name Americanization into the most popular names - e.g. the top quartile - was associated with an occupation-based earnings increase of above 10%. These gains were larger than those experienced by migrants Americanizing into less popular names - e.g. the first quartile - and even more so than those experienced by migrants who kept their original name or changed to a more distinctive name.
As to speculation on why that is, could be as simple as the fact that the brain capacity is rather limited. Handling unfamiliar letter/phoneme sequences requires more energy. As entropic creatures, we simply take the lowest energy path whenever possible.
> Almost a third of naturalizing immigrants abandoned their first names by 1930 and acquired popular American names such as William, John or Charles. [...] Widespread name Americanization prompts the question of whether it had an impact on migrants’ economic success. Figure 1 provides a preliminary answer to this question. Name Americanization into the most popular names - e.g. the top quartile - was associated with an occupation-based earnings increase of above 10%. These gains were larger than those experienced by migrants Americanizing into less popular names - e.g. the first quartile - and even more so than those experienced by migrants who kept their original name or changed to a more distinctive name.
As to speculation on why that is, could be as simple as the fact that the brain capacity is rather limited. Handling unfamiliar letter/phoneme sequences requires more energy. As entropic creatures, we simply take the lowest energy path whenever possible.