Quirkology - The Surname Study

"In the following article, originally published in The Daily Telegraph, Richard Wiseman describes how your surname may affect your life." Quirkology

"...
In 1999, Nicholas Christenfeld and his colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, uncovered evidence suggesting that a person's initials might affect perhaps the most important aspect of their life - the moment of their death. Using a large, computerised database of death certificates, they identified people whose initials formed a positive-sounding word (such as A.C.E., H.U.G. and J.O.Y.), and those that had very negative connotations, like P.I.G., B.U.M. and D.I.E. Using factors such as race, year of death and socio-economic status as controls, the researchers discovered that men with positive initials lived approximately four and a half years longer than average, whereas those with negative initials died about three years early.Women with positive initials lived an extra three years, although there was no detrimental effect for those with negative initials. Further analysis suggested that those with negative initials were especially likely to die from psychological causes, such as suicides and self-inflicted accidents...."