Dear Economist,

My wife and I are about to have a new baby girl and we were planning to call her “Aisha”, which we think is a beautiful African name. The trouble is, we’re not African and my mother-in-law has been agitating for something a bit more conventional, such as “Molly” or “Liz”. Can you recommend a course of action?

Tim Monks, London

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Dear Mr Monks,

First, would an African name cause your daughter to suffer discrimination in the workplace? Second, will she like the name on its own merits?

When the economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Marianne Bertrand sent out thousands of fake job applications to employers in Boston and Chicago, adding distinctively black or white names at random, they found unmistakeable evidence of racial discrimination against the black-sounding candidates. And well-qualified black-sounding candidates did no better than poorly qualified black-sounding candidates. It’s as though the employers just moved on whenever they came across a Jermaine or a LaTonya.

Yet other research by economists Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt suggests that giving a black child a white-sounding name does not help the child’s prospects. What that implies in your rather rare situation is not clear, but at least you will confuse the racists.

Then there is the question of your daughter’s preferences. Teenagers want boring names but many adults feel differently. Thus you need to build flexibility into the full name: an interesting middle name with a tedious first name, and vice versa. She can vary them as time goes by, and I think she is more likely to get the decision right than you, me, or even your mother-in-law.

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