Keyboard Determines Baby’s Name

The QUERTY Effect

The QUERTY Effect states that letters typed with the right hand are considered more positive than those typed with the left hand. A lefty word means that a word contains more words types with the left hand. The word "writer" is a lefty word since there are more letters typed with the left hand on the keyboard.

Baby's Name

Daniel Casasanto, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and his colleagues applied the QWERTY effect on baby names in 2012. The researchers analyzed data from the Social Security Administration for 788 names given to children between 1960 and 2012. They found that names with right-handed-words got more popular after 1990. Three decades ago the keyboard was not a commonly used writing tool [Popular Science, 11 Sep 2014].

Naming Trends

This made me ponder over the possibility that the typewriter was invented for the right-handed user. Checking the Wikipedia I found that Christopher Latham Sholes placed more emphasis on the location of vowels in the design of the typewriter than dexterity of the right hand. With this finding, I believe product naming and branding will be centered around the right-handed-words.