LONDON- Scientific recognition might have at last eased the strain of constant jokes endured by Mr. Lust the sex therapist and Mr. Warmbath the hotel manager.

Along with Mr. Woof the dog-show judge and Dr. Iball the eye surgeon, they have provided others more fortunately named with endless merriment.

But now New Scientist magazine has come up with a theory of why people gravitate toward jobs that reflect their names.

John Barnacle's decision to become a marine timber expert and Daniel Showman's authorship of a book on the North Pole are both results of "nominative determinism".

Put more simply, this means there is a subconscious force that makes someone gravitate toward a job that fits his or her surname.

New Scientist began to examine such cases after noticing a paper on incontinence written by J.W. Splatt and D.Weedon. John Hoyland, the magazine's Letter editor, said: "We were straggered to find they were genuine, so we mentioned it in the magazine and asked for any other examples. They flooded in."

They included Dr.Grunt the animal behaviourist, Miss Beat the music teacher, and the police officer in an anti-pornography unit called Richard Vice. Britain's Meteorological Office has staff called Flood, Frost, Thundercliffe, and Weatherall. Dave Storm works for the U.S.National Weather Service.

Hoyland said: "There are hundreds and hundreds of these examples around, and it has been mentioned by Jung and psychologists.

But, of course, there are probably hundreds of Splatts and Weedons who do not write about incontinence. If I was called Splatt I would choose a different subject to write about."

Editor's note: Ornithologist David Bird's column on birds appears Saturdays in The Gazette.

Will Bennett
London Daily Telegraph

If you want to learn more about the phenomenon, search the New Scientist magazine site by clicking on this link. Use the keywords: nominative determinism. You will access dozens of letters about names and professions.

More on NOMINATIVE DETERMINISM is found in New Scientist Magazine Archives (reprinted here with permission from the magazine)

NOMINATIVE DETERMINISM - 25 April 1998 -

We always believed that we had pioneered the in-depth study of nominative determinism, the tendency of people to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their names. But now Jim Emmett has sent us a paper, "Put the Blame on Name" by Lawrence Casler, which was published in Psychological Reports (vol 63, p 476) back in 1975. "There is a determinant," states Casler, "whose effect may not be phenomenal but is probably more than nominal, namely the name." He goes on to list over a hundred examples of the genre, including such gems as "Effects of tactile stimulation" by a person called Finger, "Sequelae of orgasm in male guinea pigs" by a Mr or Mrs Grunt, "Animal behaviour" by Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, "Responses to authoritarian discipline" by Stern and Cope, "Intra-uterine contraceptive devices" by Gamble, "Juvenile delinquency" by Lively and Reckless, and "Effects of parental pressure on school performance" by someone called Mumpower.

Meanwhile, despite our many attempts to call a halt to our own coverage of the phenomenon, readers continue to draw our attention to it. Here is another selection from the many examples that arrive in our in-tray each week.

First, the good news. How pleasant to know that Grant Warmbath is the manager of a family hotel in Inverness-shire, and that marriage to Steve Cook enabled Jane Best, a Tokyo restaurant owner, to become Jane Best Cook. We are pleased to hear, too, that a senior nurse at St Paul's Eye Unit, Liverpool, is named W. Iball, that there is a dog show judge in New South Wales called B. Woof and that there is a printing and stationery firm in Northern Ireland called Reid and Wright.

Less encouraging is the news that there is an estate agent in Kidderminster called Doolittle and Dalley, an officer in the Metropolitan Police's indecent publications squad called Richard Vice, and an American expert in metallurgical forensic science and failure analysis called David Krashes. We were also surprised by the sign we spotted on a lorry in London advertising the services of "Terry Bull, Builder".

Returning to familiar territory, medicine and psychiatry again feature strongly in our list. William Tranquilli is the author of a recent paper on sedation and anaesthesia, while J. Lust is a sex counsellor in Auckland, New Zealand, and J. Angst is a leading Swiss specialist in depressive and suicidal thoughts. Then there is P. J. Coffer, a clinician in pulmonary diseases in the Netherlands, the anatomy lecturer Dr Blood of Queensland University, and Laura Slaughter, who specialises in impulsive aggression at the University of Texas. And we mustn't forget Mr Fawcett, a London urologist.

And will confidence in Britain's NHS will be restored by a recent internal paper, "The need for surgeons in rural areas", whose authors include Messrs Black and Decker?

Education, too, continues to provide examples. Hampton School in Hertfordshire boasts a Mr Sentance in its English department and a Miss Beat in its music department, while Harlaw Academy in Aberdeen, employs as music teachers Mr Meldrum and Miss Sharp.

A hitherto neglected field is the weather. Leading the pack is Britain Meteorological Office, among whose employees are a Flood, a Frost, a Thundercliffe and a Weatherall. Then there is the US National Weather Service in Seattle, which employs a Dave Storm, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which sends out forecasts signed by A. Rainbow. The Bonus Wind Turbine Unit in Newtown, Wales, employs Philip Breeze, while the Firenet Information Service, which looks at the meteorological effects of wildfires, has a webmaster named Jeff Ash, and the University of Colorado at Boulder runs lectures on climate change by Elizabeth Weatherhead.

Casting the net wider, the credits of a recent episode of Last of the Summer Wine featured a stunt arranger by the name of Stuart Fell Dominique Dropsy was a goalkeeper for Bordeaux and France, Rachalle Splatt is a well-known drag-racing driver, and a recent visit of British racehorse breeders to Japan was arranged by Chris Trott and Tony Cantor.

Then there is the secretary of the New South Wales Chess Association, Adrian Chek. Carolyn and Tom Screech look after owls at their bird sanctuary in Cornwall. The executive director of Sydney's Residential Window Association is Ian Frame. Angela Ovary is the author of a horticultural book entitled, believe it or not, Sex in Your Garden. Katherine Shelfer writes books for librarians. A London software company has a computer security consultant called Trevor Drawbridge. Professor Solt is an expert on desalinisation of water in East Anglia. The late Lord Hives was one of Britain's leading beekeepers. And who else should be the head of the Sydney Casino than Neil Gamble?

AND MORE ON NOMINATIVE DETERMINISM... - 3 May 1997 -

Last week we finally gave in to the pressure from readers to return to the phenomenon of nominative determinism, the tendency of people to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their surname. Continuing the theme, here are just some of the huge number of examples readers have sent in over the past months.

In a recent Close Up West programme on BBC 2, a discussion on the future of the River Kennet featured Peter Spillett of the Thames Water Utility and Neil Fishpool of the National Campaign for Water Justice.

Katherine Hacker is the sales manager of the anti-virus software company Dr Solomon's, while the Web designer at the Tacoma News Tribune's Internet site is Bill Webb. And how revealing to receive unsolicited mail from the superstore PC World signed by the business centre manager John Junk.

Dorchester Tax Office employs a tax inspector with the surname Dodge, while Oxford boasts a VAT inspector named Ferret. Meanwhile, the head of Australia's New South Wales road safety bureau is a Mr Hazzard.

Chichester District Council's cesspool emptying service has recently been privatised, and is now operated by a company run by one Alan Pee.

At the University of Sheffield, the telecommunications officer is Katherine Cable and the head of security is Brian Mole.

Blackburn, Lancashire, boasts a monumental masons called W. Rock & Co, while C. Page runs a bookshop in Brighton. The contractor digging up the pavement in front of reader Koen De Smet's flat is called Digginwell.

The author of Great Gardens, Great Designers is George Plumptree. The author of A Companion to English Parish Churches is Stephen Prior. The Observer's Book of Music used to be edited by Freda Dinn and Paul Sharp.

M. Bedrock of Imperial College, London, wrote his 1984 thesis on "Sedimentology of some Westphalian C sequences in the Yorkshire coalfield".

The TV programme The Really Useful Show recently featured Eddie Helps from AA Home Assistance in an item about looking after your home.

Yet again, dentists feature prominently as nominative determinists. In New Zealand, there is a dentist named F. A. Payne practising in Wellington, while Oxford has a dental clinic run by Messrs Keene and Savage. Further examples are A. P. Gummers in Glasgow, Chris Pullin in Sydney and Y. T.Chew in Ashford, Kent. Reader William Bowles's childhood dentist was Dr Phang.

Other areas of medicine also take their share. In Oxford there is a cardiologist named Dr Hart, while the senior radiologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for many years was Ernest Reginald Crisp. In Sydney there is a company named S & M Grocock that manufactures artificial limbs.

The BBC 2 programme Trust me, I'm a Doctor recently featured Professor Waddell, an orthopaedic surgeon, and a physiotherapist called Mark Bender. During his medical career, reader John Davies encountered an anaesthetist called Kurt Whiffler.

The head of the national fish marketing board in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, is called R. Carp. Andrew Welsh is, contrarily, an MP for the Scottish National Party. The local optician in the village of Uzès in southern France is called J. Pupil.

In the Czech Republic, Dr Vetvicka (whose name means "branchlet") is an official at Prague's botanical gardens, while a recent Czech minister of health was called Mr Rubas (meaning "shroud").

The actress who appears in the recent "vitamins in peas" commercial for Birds Eye is called Julie Peasgood. In Australia, Dr Monypenny lectures in banking and finance at the James Cook University of North Queensland. The warden of Norwich prison is named Nick Wall.

Margaret Sedgley carries out research into reeds and other grasses in Adelaide, while Bill Crush processes the leaves of aloes in Queensland.

A firm of undertakers in South Africa is called Human and Pitt. C. Leake is a senior hydrologist for Tarmac UK. Dr Ali No'man was the head of the Department of Immigration and Naturalisation in the United Arab Emirate in the 1970s.

The Pan family in Bourke, Australia, have rejuvenated the town's abattoir to process some 300 000 feral goats a year, making the country the world's largest exporter of goat meat.

Stuart Worboys of North Queensland, tells us that his surname means "keeper of the forest" in old French. He carries out botanical research in Australia's tropical rainforests. His brother Graeme is a regional manager of national parks in New South Wales, while another brother, Warren, works as a gardener at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. Worboys also remembers a cooking teacher called Carol Pye, and knows an optometrist in Adelaide named C. Wright.

Lastly, experts in Himalayan epidemiology C. R. M. Bangham and R. A.Hope are reputed to have written a paper on contraception among the nomadic people of Tibet, but we have been unable to track down this reference.

AND MORE ON NOMINATIVE DETERMINISM... - 26 April 1997 -

This column has a rival. For the past couple of years we have dipped every now and then into the strange world of nominative determinism, the tendency of people to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their surname.

All the while, unknown to us, Helen Whitehead of Nottingham has been compiling her own collection of "Appropriate authors of scientific papers". Here are some of her favourites from various learned journals:

"Comparison of bread firmness measurements by four instruments" by A.E. Baker and others.
"Coatings update" by W. Brushwell.
"Nitrate pollution of water--fact and fiction" by D. Tester and others.
"Determination of cationic surfactants in waste and river waters" by V. T.Wee.
"Cranberry juice" by I. R. Berry.
"Determination of plasma corticosterone of chickens by HPLC" by J.Fowler and others.
"Improved microdesulfonation GLC procedure for determination of linear alkylbenzene sulfonates in UK rivers" by B. Waters and others.
"Variable effluent splitter for simultaneous sniffing-MS monitoring" by S.Nitz.

Whitehead also tells us that Thomas R. Fogg used to work at the Center for Atmospheric Chemistry Studies, Rhode Island; R. D. Stubblefield is an expert on toxins in wheat; S. B. Weed is a noted soil scientist and Dennis Wrong is a leading light in the Skeptics Society.

To this we can only add that the other day a book landed on our desk called A Student's Guide to the Seashore by J. D. Fish and S. Fish. It seems that nominative determinism is in the air again. Next week we will publish some of the many examples that readers have sent in over the past few months.

AND MORE...AT THIS ADDRESS: www.newscientist.com/weird/bizarre17.html