The Influence of Fluency

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet - according to Shakespeare. Or would it?

Adam Alter conducted a survey on five hundred lawyers in New York and rated their names from least fluent surnames such as Pucinski, Dissanayake and Selvaratnam, to most fluent surnames such as Williams, Smith and Jones.

What did he find? Lawyers with easily pronounceable names tended to rise quicker through the middle ranks of the law firms where they worked than those who for instance had the “misfortune” of being named Upadhyad.

Fortunately for those entering the law profession with difficult to pronounce surname, this effect diminished in the upper ranks of the firms where proven competence over years counts most.

A further intriguing study on fluency was conducted by Alter on the names of stock market shares. Shares that have been trading for some time in the market have proven themselves (or not) and stock analysts have had ample time to judge the performance of various company shares.

But what about stocks and shares that are new to the market? More difficult to forecast as there is little public information and track record to base an opinion on. Alter tracked the performance of new shares on the NYSE for five years, and differentiated between shares with fluent names such as Belden Inc. or Skyblue Systems, and shares with tricky names such as Magyar Tavkozlesi He also divided the names of the stock tickers between fluent or not, for example KAR (fluent) and RXW (disfluent).

Shares with more fluent and smoother sounding names performed much better than the difficult names. An investment in a basket of the ten most fluent named shares compared to the ten most disfluent named shares would have yielded a significantly greater return; a full 33 % more after a year.

Warning: before you run out to your nearest fund manager to discuss your new ground-breaking “Fluency Fund”, let’s look closer. The fluent names stocks and ticker symbols did perform better than the more difficult ones at first, but the performance differential shrunk over time as actual performance information on the companies increased.

We are influenced more by fluid concepts than names that are cumbersome to decipher and process cognitively. We simplify our decision making by factors which are easy to recall and process. Fluency gives rise to a positive response and feelings of familiarity with something, resulting in higher judgments of preference.

In simpler words, when we easily comprehend a name we tend to like it more and prefer it over other choices we may have. “Woes unite foes” is clearly smoother on the mind than “times of economic hardship creates bonds of friendship between people that otherwise would have been enemies”

These findings suggest that next time you think of a name for your product, business or enterprise, remember the effect and value of a name that rolls easily off the tongue and sounds pleasing to the ear. 

Remember the influence of fluency.