Studies on names and performance seem to be all the rage right now:

We like our names. And that preference can have negative repercussions, according to research published last month. Major leaguers with "K" initials tend to strike out more, perhaps reflecting the batters' unconscious pull to appear next to the strikeout symbol "K" on scorecards. Students with initials C and D have worse grades than the A's and B's and everyone else, gravitating toward the grades their initials represent.

Of course, I'm a little skeptical about all of these studies, and with tiny effects like 0.02, these studies probably deserve it. In any case, they're still interesting to read about. I wonder how one could get his hands on such data. The data's probably just an email away, but in my current half-asleep stooper, I'll leave that for another time. I'm sure it'd be really interesting to play with though.

Have you read Freakonomics? If you have, all of these name studies remind me of that chapter about the two brothers named Winner and Loser. If you haven't read the book, uh, there's a chapter on two brothers named Winner and Loser.