"Hunter?" "Oscar?"

These names will be a lot more common in the future.

The 2022 baby name rankings are out. Muhammad and Lily, perhaps inspired by royal baby Lilibet Diana, have taken top spots. Zion, Grayson, Oakley and Junior all made the top 100 for British boys. Today, in England and Wales, there are at least 16 children named Peach and another 74 called Kale.

Picking a name is a big decision.

Studies suggest a person's name can determine everything from their career to how likely they are to donate money to disaster victims.

Economist David Figlio found a child's name influences how teachers treat them. In turn, the treatment is reflected in the pupil's achievements.

Other studies found students with unusual names are more likely to drop out of college and show symptoms of neurosis. People with "unfashionable" names experience more rejection on dating apps.

It is not all bad for those with rare monikers. Unusual names are also associated with higher levels of creativity and open-mindedness. A person whose name is uncommon has higher odds of having a more unusual career, such as a judge or film director.

According to the implicit-egotism effect, we like things that resemble ourselves. We are more likely to take jobs or live in towns that remind us of our own names.

One study found that people named Denis and Denise are more likely to become dentists and men called George and Geoffrey are "disproportionately likely to be published in the geosciences".

Your name may influence your physical appearance. Researchers discovered both humans and computers perform better than expected when matching strangers' faces with their names.

"Our given name is our very first social tagging," they wrote. "Each name has associated characteristics, behaviours and a look." Shared social expectations influence a person's expressions to create a "face-type" for certain names.

Human cultures have always been fascinated by names. When the Greek hero Odysseus is captured by a giant, he is able to evade harm as long as he keeps his name secret.

Charles DickensThe Victorian novelist is credited with inventing Christmas as we know it today through the warm descriptions of it in his books. knew the importance of names for capturing the essence of a character. He created Ebenezer Scrooge, the wizened old miserSomebody who saves as much as possible and spends as little as they can. , and Mr Gradgrind, a strict educator concerned only with hard facts.

Yes: The differences may at first seem subtle, but names help forge who we are in a million tiny ways. They influence the teacher meeting us on our first day of school and the employer reading our CV.

No: Much of the science behind nominative determinism is shaky at best. The influence would be so tiny as to be unnoticeable. There are a huge number of factors that shape our destinies.

Or... It is not that our names change our lives, but rather that our names reflect other factors like class and race that limit the opportunities available to us. We should work to change this reality.