In 1891, Oscar Wilde published his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a man remains young and beautiful while his painted portrait exhibits the signs of the man’s real-life debauchery. In psychology, the Dorian Gray effect refers to internal factors, like someone’s personality, affecting their external appearance. The link between a person’s face and their name might be a sort of Dorian Gray effect, by which growing up with a name leads to alterations in our physical looks.

The most obvious, of course, is hairstyle. It is possible that, within a particular culture, a certain name tends to evoke wilder hair, and that a person with this name, subconsciously wanting to belong, lets their hair grow out in a wild style to match this stereotype. In fact, in the Israeli paper, one of the studies consisted in presenting 10 faces either in full or as stand-alone hairstyles or the reverse, with the inner features of the face devoid of hair. In all three conditions, participants did better than chance at matching these photos to their names. In the hairstyle-only condition, they found the correct name better than with chance alone for nine out of the ten photos of hairdos!

And if someone does not look like their name, they may inherit a nickname that provides a better match. The name Robert is particularly plastic. It’s easy to imagine that parents and friends who see the boy Robert grow up not looking like their idea of a Robert might choose instead to call him Bob, or Rob, or Bobby, or Robby, or even Bert.