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Will Beckham kid, Harper Seven, get a job?

Twitter is all abuzz this morning over the naming of former Spice girl Victoria Beckham and soccer star David Beckham’s new daughter.

David Beckham proudly posted her name on his Facebook page today — Harper Seven Beckham.

I am so proud and excited to announce the birth of our daughter Harper Seven Beckham. She weighed a healthy 7lbs 10oz and arrived at 7.55 this morning, here in LA. Victoria is doing really well and her brothers are delighted to have a baby sister xx

As you can imagine, the Beckhams’ choice got all the comedians out in the Twitterverse:

“Did they give birth to a robot?” wrote @Wolfrum.

And @djplastician wrote: “Am I the only person who thinks Harper Seven sounds like a level on Call Of Duty?”

All kidding aside, it got me wondering about how a name impacts a person throughout their life, especially when they go out and try to find a job. Based on research done on this exact topic, it looks like Harper Seven won’t have a leg up because of her name, and it may even hold her back.

Like it or not, your name can make a difference in how seriously you are taken at work and whether you even get your foot in the door for the interview.

One study by researchers at MIT and the University of Chicago found that job applicants with names that sounded African-American got short shrift when it came to the hiring process. The researchers sent out 5,000 fake resumes, and it turned out that resumes with names such as Tyrone and Tamika were less likely to get calls from prospective employers than their Anglo-sounding counterparts, and qualifications seemed to have little impact.

Remember that guy hotel ownerfrom Taos, N.M. who ordered a group of Hispanic employees change their names to sound more Anglo Saxon . For example, changing Martin (pronounced Mar-TEEN) to plain-old Martin or Marco to Mark.

At his Taos hotel, Larry Whitten explained, when some workers answered the phones and said their names, customers didn’t understand what they were saying. For example, Mar-TEEN, sounded like “my thing,” he said. “I am not a racist,” said Whitten, who fired several employees for insubordination. What motivated his decisions, he stressed, was the bottom line.

He was pushing the envelope when it came to discriminating against his workers, but Whitten was just more honest about it than most people who do hiring.

Tammy Kabell, a resume consultant, has often seen how names are perceived in her line of work. “I’ve had frank discussions with HR managers and hiring mangers in the corporate world, and they tell me when they see a name that’s ethnic or a black name, they perceive that person as having low education or coming from a lower socioeconomic class,” she said.

And it’s only gotten worse during the recession, she added. “At 10 percent unemployment, they’re going through a lot of resumes, so they can be selective of who they call.” Following Sept. 11, 2001, she noticed a particular bias against Muslim/Arab sounding names. One particular client who was an electrical engineer was from Pakistan and named Raheem. “He looked for a year and a half and couldn’t get anything,” she explained, adding that he could only find a job as a supervisor of a cleaning staff at a Miami hotel.

So how do you know if your name is holding you back?

One site, BehindTheName.com, actually provides feedback from readers on how a host of names from all different cultures and ethic groups are perceived.

John, for example, was seen by those polled as largely “wholesome,” while Juan was rated higher when it came to being “devious.” And as far as the “strange” rating on the two names — 44 percent thought John was strange, while nearly 70 percent thought Juan was strange.

Bruce Lansky, the author of “100,000 Plus Baby Names,” is convinced a name could potentially make or break a child’s future career.

“Most people in America are not bigoted, but they do have comfort zones,” he said. “If you’re picking a name for your child, it’s reasonable to select a name that reflects your ethnicity but which will strike most people as ‘familiar’ or ‘mainstream’ rather than ‘foreign’ or ‘off-putting.’”

I’m not totally in agreement with Lansky. Even with a name like Evanthia Tahmincioglu I think I’ve been able to do OK career wise.

So maybe Harper Seven has a chance. Besides your name, having connections is a big plus when it comes to career attainment; and I’m thinking Harper’s parent’s may be able to hook her up.

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