Gendered names correlate with differences in behavior

LiveScience - Good or bad, baby names correlate with long-lasting effects

This reports on ongoing work, and also references numerous studies showing the correlation between a person's name and developmental and behavioral differences. The centerpiece study analyzed English-speaking names according to phonemes and related their combinations to the predictability of belonging to a boy or girl. The idea here is that certain phonetic combinations are considered (historically) more or less feminine or masculine. Those that were more feminine in boys correlated with disciplinary problems in starting in middle school. Those that were more feminine in girls correlated with more coursework in humanities, rather than in math and science for girls with more masculine names.

Another use for this phonetic analysis is finding a correlation between names and perceived socio-economic status. In other words, names more likely to be given by parents in a lower class correlated with poorer performance in school, even if the named child isn't from that class. (In this part of the study, only less common names were studied). Interestingly as well, "preliminary" work on novel spellings of names show that children with those names learn to read and spell slower.