The paper "The Perception of Names in Experimental Studies on Ethnic Origin: A Cross-National Validation in Europe" - led by Abel Ghiekere, Billie Martiniello and Pieter-Paul Verhaeghe - was published in Nature's Scientific Data.
What’s in a name? Names are more than just neutral labels to denote others. They carry important signals, in terms of social class, ethnic origin, gender etc., which are often the basis for discrimination and exclusion. That’s why it is important to understand to which extent people perceive these signals.
With the EqualStrength team – a Horizon Europe project – Dr. Abel Ghekiere, Dr. Billie Martiniello and Prof. Pieter-Paul Verhaeghe tested how people perceive 1,078 names from both majority and minority groups in Europe. It includes 82,400 evaluations by 8,240 respondents across Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.
The authors demonstrated that names convey many meanings, such as ethnicity, gender, religiosity, socioeconomic status, language fluency, and skin colour - and these perceptions vary notably by country and origin. Additionally, in line with existing US-focused literature, the dataset shows big variations in the signalling-quality of names, stressing the importance of using validated names in field experiments, surveys, etc.
It is crucial to better understand why, for example, people are discriminated against on the basis of the ‘colour’ or ‘class’ their name connotes, and how this differs between societies. Moreover, scholars often use names in their experiments or surveys, but don’t always have the time and resources to properly validate these names.
The authors provide a unique dataset of validated names accompanied by extensive background data on respondents. They also have made available an innovative online tool that allows scholars to assess names and their associated perception easily and quickly.
The full article in open access is available here.
The online tool is available here.
To read more about EqualStrengt project, visit this website.
Citation: Ghekiere, A., Martiniello, B., Capistrano, D., Kuhnle, J., Sprong, S., Atay, P., ... & Verhaeghe, P. P. (2025). The Perception of Names in Experimental Studies on Ethnic Origin: A Cross-National Validation in Europe. Scientific data, 12(1), 1883.
