From Patrick to John F.
利用历史人口普查数据，通过名字的民族独特性指数，发现爱尔兰、意大利、德国和波兰移民子女取更“美国化”的名字与更高职业成就相关，而俄罗斯犹太移民则相反，约三分之二效应来自名字的信号作用。
Taking advantage of historical census records that include full first and last names, we apply a new approach to measuring the effect of cultural assimilation on economic success for the children of the last great wave of immigrants to the United States. We created a quantitative index of ethnic distinctiveness of first names and show the consequences of ethnic-sounding names for the occupational achievement of the adult children of European migrants. We find a consistent tendency for the children of Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrants with more "American"-sounding names to have higher occupational achievement. About one-third of this effect appears to be due to social class differences in name-giving, and the remaining two-thirds to signaling effects of the names themselves. An exception is found for Russian, predominantly Jewish, immigrants, where we find a positive effect of ethnic naming on occupational achievement. The divergent effects of our new measure of cultural assimilation, sometimes hurting and sometimes helping, lend historical empirical support to more recent theories of the advantages of different paths to assimilation. The effects of first names are robust to controls for the ethnic recognizability of last names, suggesting that immigrants' success depended on being perceived as making an effort to assimilate rather than hiding one's origins.