What’s in a name? As the Internet continues to increase its presence in the lives of people around the world, a new Wall Street Journal article discusses just how important a role your name and its Google results can have.  For a while now, most savvy social-networkers have realized that ill-conceived content on sites like MySpace or Facebook could lead to unexpected consequences, and many others have discovered this inadvertently, to their own chagrin.  With over 80% of executive recruiters reportedly searching for the names of potential new hires online, and an estimated 7% of search-engine queries being names of people (no word on what fraction of these are celebrities or similar), it should come as no surprise that the search results returned by your name may not only say a lot about you, but could even influence your social status and career.  People with common, nondescript names can become faceless nobodies adrift in a crowd of other John Smiths, and fail to stand out to prospective employers or old friends. For those unlucky ones who have the misfortune to share their names with murderers, sexual predators, or other unsavory characters, the consequences can be even more disastrous.  As the article notes, some parents are even taking this into consideration when naming their children, discarding names that produce too many results on Google in favor of less common monikers, in a manner reminiscent of a world-wide anti-coordination game.  (While I have no problem with this per se, if I hear of one more child being named Krystynna or Rylee I’m going to push for federally mandated spelling classes for new parents.)

While the Wall Street Journal offers no predictions for the longevity of this trend, I think it will only continue to strengthen over the years.  Over the past decade or so, search engines have gone from primitive sites that produced laughably bad results to well-known cultural phenomena, and in recent years social networking sites have become important touchstones as well.  The Internet is now the primary source for researching other people, and the most ubiquitous method for using it is still name-based searching.  Unless that changes in the future - which seems unlikely - names will continue to retain their power, and everyone, parents included, would be well advised to keep that in mind.