“We’ve shown time and time again that people are attracted to people, places and things that resemble their names, without a doubt.”

In studies that make believers in free will squirm, Dr. Pelham’s team asserts that names and the letters in them are surprisingly influential in people’s lives. In one experiment, participants of both sexes evaluated a young woman more favorably when the number on the jersey she was wearing had been subliminally paired with their own names on a computer screen.

“Self-similarity is really one of the largest driving forces of behavior of social beings,” said Jeremy Bailenson, the director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab.

There are more prosaic reasons that people may feel connected to their Googlegängers, though. They may share a name because they belong to the same ethnic group, or their families may have had similar aspirations for them.

“There’s a lot of soft evidence out there that parents largely give names based on a set of expectations,” Dr. Bruning said. “Parents who name a boy Bronco versus naming the child Cecil, you would expect one would be more likely to get a football on his next birthday and the other would get a book. That might be a starting point for one’s identity being associated with a name.”<<

I attended the wedding of Jack and Jackie who were best friends with Rick and Ricky.

lol for both comments
I always remember people whose names start with "A"

My best friend Deborah married Douglas. Her brother Joe married Joanie.

Somehow I expected Bertha to be big, fat, and ugly. Boy was I wrong! Sometimes names are just cultural. I also thought Thelma was going to be somewhere between a 3 and a 5. Wrong again! Thelma's a fox.

But I digress...

AB....

My best friend Deborah married Douglas.

How did I miss the bleeding obvious? My name is also Deborah, and we met while attending the same college in a town called Decorah. Hmm...