New Orleans - Maybe names really Will hurt you. People with initials such as ACE or GOD are likely to live longer than those whose Names spell out words like APE, DUD, RAT or PIG, a study suggests.

The study looked at 27 years' worth of California death certificates. People with monograms such as JOY or WOW had a better chance of living longer - and were less likely to commit suicide or die in an accident - than those with neutral or meaningless initials such as JAY or WLW, or those with initials like BUM or UGH, said sychologist Nicholas Christenfeld.

He presented his findings Friday at a meeting in New Orleans of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. "The argument is that there's some psychological symbolic factor that can exert its impact cumulatively over the years. You get teased at school, wonder what your parents thought of you - maybe fate is out to get you -but at every stage it's a little tiny depressant to be called PIG, or a little tiny boost to your esteem to be called ACE or WOW," Christenfeld said in an interview.

The findings do seem to support the idea that liking your name and liking yourself may be linked, and that parents should be sensitive when naming children, said Penelope Wasson Dralle, a professor in LSU Medical Center's psychiatry department. But, she warned, the study "really doesn't give us any cause and effects." The study, conducted by researchers from the University of California at San Diego, looked at the five million or so people who died in California from 1969 through 1997.

Concentrating on men because marriage generally doesn't change their initials, the researchers found 2,287 men with initials that were deemed plainly negative, such as ILL, or DED. An additional 1,200 spelled or came close to words considered positive: WIN and VIP, for example.

The researchers found about a dozen "good" sets of initials, and about 20 "bad" ones.

Men with WINning initials lived 4.48 years longer than a control group of people with neutral or ambiguous monograms, while DUDs, ASSes and such died an average of 2.8 years earlier than the control group.

Six suicides were reported among the 1,200 men in the good group versus 79 among the 2,287 men in the bad group.

 

Initial Reaction Sets of initials used in the study of whether people with "good" or "bad" initials lived longer: The 'bad' APE, ASS, BAD, BUG, BUM, DED, DIE, DTH, DUD, HOG, ILL, MAD, PIG, RAT, ROT, SAD, SIC, SIK, UGH The 'good' ACE, GOD, HUG, JOY, LIF, LIV, LOV, VIP, WEL, WIN, WOW