University of California at San Diego researchers looked at 27 years’ worth of California death certificates, and found that people with monograms such as JOY or WOW had a better chance of living longer — and were less likely to commit suicide or die in an accident — than those with neutral or meaningless initials, or those named with negatively associative initials (such as BUM or UGH), The researchers speculate that there is a psychological symbiotic factor that exerts its impact cumulatively over the years. All in all, men with ‘good’ initials lived 4.48 years longer than those with neutral monograms, while men with ‘bad’ initials died 2.8 years earlier than the control group.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: Reported by Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/4/00
