Study: Initials may impact performance

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- A study conducted by two U.S. researchers purports to show the initials of a person's name are directly linked with their performance in certain areas.

Yale University researcher Joseph Simmons and Leif Nelson of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals' initials played a role when looking at their success in baseball or academia, a news release from Psychological Science said Wednesday.

In the duo's first study, they took into account Major League Baseball players' initials and strikeout percentages during the last 93 years.

Since strikeouts are typically recorded with the letter "K," the researchers attempted to discover if those players whose names started with that letter struck out more often.

They determined that those players did, indeed, strike out more often than those whose names began with different letters.

The second study took into account letter grades in academia in relation to students' initials and again a link was found.

By looking at the grade point averages of M.B.A. students from an unidentified university during the last 15 years, they found students with names starting with "C" or "D" typically had lower grade point averages than those whose names began with "A" and B."