Your name may be the key to your success: "Peter" and "Deborah" are the most popular names of CEOs on the professional social networking site LinkedIn, according to research by LinkedIn, which examines correlations between people's first names and their career choices.
Male CEOs are most likely to be called Peter, Bob, Jack, Bruce and Fred, whereas female CEOs are most likely named Deborah, Sally, Debra, Cynthia and Carolyn.
Male business leaders tend to be short or shortened versions of popular first names, LinkedIn finds, whereas female CEOs tend to use their full names.
Frank Nuessel, linguist and editor of Names: A Journal of Onomastics, suggests those gender differences are not by accident, ExecutiveBiz reported.
"Sales professionals in the US and males CEOs globally use these shortened versions of their names as a way to be more approachable and accessible to their potential clients," Nuessel said.
"Female CEOs appear to prefer to use their full names and not nicknames, which could signify they want to be taken more seriously and want co-workers to think of them in a more professional light."
Below, other findings from the LinkedIn report.
Names lengths among CEOs also vary by industry:
- Sales professionals tend to have short names: Chip, Todd and Trey.
- Engineering professionals have longer names: Rajesh, Jeremy and Andrew.
- Heads of food and restaurant organizations have longer, French names: Thierry, Philippe and Laurent.
Women dominate leadership roles in human resources, led by "Emma" and "Katie," whereas men dominate law enforcement, led by "Billy" and "Darrell."
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"Howard" is the most popular name for US-based CEOs. Below, the top over-represented CEO names across the globe:
About the data: Findings are based on analysis of LinkedIn data—consisting of roughly 100 million professional entries, with first names and corresponding career histories, in April 2011.
