Nominative determinism

Nominative determinism (ND) is the hypothesis that a person's name may have a significant role in determining key aspects of job, profession, or even character. Writing in 1953, Carl Jung gave the example of a food minister named Herr Feist ("Mr Stout"). He also mentioned his own last name and that of fellow psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, which respectively, mean "young" and "joy" in German. He pointed out that these are potential examples of what he called the compulsion of the name, considering Freud's pleasure principle and Jung's idea of rebirth.

Such a connection between name and character was a commonly held notion in the ancient world and the Latin term nomen est omen (from Greek όνομα ορίζοντας) is still commonly heard in English and other languages, but translations such as nomenclature is destiny, Jung's compulsion of the name, and others are sometimes heard.

The term nominative determinism was coined in 1994 by New Scientist editor John Hoyland. Synonyms and related concepts include: aptronym, apronym, aptonym, euonym, jobonyms, 'namephreaks', onomastic determinism, 'perfect fit last names' (PFLNs), psychonymics. Tom Stoppard in his play Jumpers labelled the phenomenon cognomen syndrome.