The question ‘what’s in a name’ was asked a long time ago in everyone’s favourite scene from Romeo and Juliet. But no one goes by Shakespeare any more, it seems. They don’t care that many of the pithy sayings we spout blithely from time to time owe their origin to him.

In this case, where names are concerned, it seems he was mistaken — because research since then has documented that everything IS in the name. And so, long after you have been saddled with it and have blamed everything but your name for all the many downs in your life (conveniently forgetting to count the ups, of course), here comes a study that tells you that you are likely to fare better all around if you have a name that sounds intelligent and attractive!

It is reported that if you have a glamorous name, chances are you will have a life to match. Why? Because people around you treat you differently and you begin to act the way your name sounds.

Does that mean that a Rose or a Flora becomes not half as interesting as an Acacia or Ixora and therefore disappears into herself and becomes something of a shrinking violet? While her friends Acacia and Ixora, who probably have to constantly explain the origins of their names – a botanist mother, a Latin professor father, perhaps – blossom under all the attention and go on to make waves?

Is that why simple, ordinary first names are rarely encountered nowadays? In India, how often do you find newborns named Anil or Anita? Instead, you would hear Agasthya and Ahana, perhaps. What’s more, you could also have an extra letter added to give more of a flourish to an already exotic name — and appease the stars or whatever it is that controls the Fates and bring even better fortune to you!

So, if you have always hated the blandness of your life blame it on the ordinariness of your name. Maybe it is time to rethink it, spice it up, add a syllable or two here and there – and then watch as other people follow up their ‘What was that again?’ with a question about the meaning of your name, where it came from, your family tree, and so on, as you grow in their estimation and in yours.

Most of us have had times in our lives when we hated our names – the origin of them or maybe even the nicknames that came out of them. At a certain stage, I had at least a dozen other possibilities in mind, mostly taken from the characters I particularly admired for their effectiveness in the stories I read and re-read — and no, Medusa was not among them but Athena certainly was!

Later, when it seemed that trying to be effective was too tiring and maybe amiability worked better, I longed for a sweet and gentle name like Grace (after the princess). It would be a given, I assumed, that with a name like that, my nature would not only follow suit but I would automatically be in everyone’s good graces ... this thought striking me about the time I had dropped the nth brick in conversation ...

It was only much later, while stumbling and falling over my feet in an attempt to attain elegant and graceful attire (if nothing else), that I decided that the effort required was more than I was prepared to put in – and I gave in with good grace and allowed the name to slip off my list!

In fact, the list also disappeared somewhere in the course of all that fumbling and tumbling — and I grew comfortable with my insufficiencies, inabilities and inadequacies.

Perhaps that’s how names work: by making us do the work — or not!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.