Your name influences your appearance as you age, according to new research

Researchers found that adults often look like their names, meaning people can match a face to a name more accurately than random guessing.

But this isn’t true for children, which suggests that our faces grow into our names over time.

The idea that names might influence facial appearance draws from the broader concept of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Study 4A involved 100 adult participants (aged 19 to 39 years ) who were asked to match names to a mix of real adult faces and digitally aged faces of children.

Study 4B involved 310 artificially aged faces ( 108 males and 202 females) The researchers suggest that this might happen both directly, through choices like hairstyle, glasses, and makeup, and indirectly, through life experiences that leave their mark.

The study was conducted by Yonat Zwebner , Moses Miller , Noa Grobgeld , Jacob Goldenberg , and Ruth Mayo .

The researchers suggested that it would be interesting to investigate the point at which people start to “grow into” their names.

Future research could also investigate the impact of a person’s name on their life outcomes.