Want to be a sexy man? Have a short, sharp name. But to be an attractive woman, you’ll want luxuriant, flowing vowels. A rose may be a rose by another name, but studies show that being given names with the right combination of sound and shape could make you a whole 6 per cent more alluring.

Tastes in names can change remarkably over the years (unless you really still go for Aethelbald and Hermenjart), but investigators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe they know the formula for today’s magnetic moniker: it’s a special mix of vowels, word length and mouth shape.

Two years ago, the researchers asked visitors to a website to rate the attractiveness of 24 different pictures posted on it. The names under each picture were regularly swapped to see if this affected the number of votes received. The results, researchers claimed, were dramatic.

They found that short, sharp, monosyllabic names such as Ben, Tim, Luke or Matt, which are spoken with the front of the mouth, apparently make a man more attractive than longer names such as Roger, Jonathan or Henry. The opposite is true for women, the study claimed, with long-vowelled Aleisha and Julia rated as sexier than Jen, Abby and Wendy and names with more vowels.

Attractive names make you about 6 per cent sexier than dull ones, claims a Manchester Metropolitan University study published in the Journal of Psychology. Students were shown slides of people’s faces and names and asked to rate them. The effect was stronger for women, it said. But people with attractive names don’t score only in the sexiness stakes. They tend to be treated with more respect by those with names considered socially undesirable, according to earlier studies. Having a longer name helps because it makes you sound posher, claims a 1993 study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Conversely, a “low-class” name could harm your wellbeing, says a study published in 2000. Five hundred psychiatrists gave a diagnosis on people in police custody based on written reports. Those with names seen as stereotypically working-class were 20 per cent less likely to be considered genuinely ill.

Waynes, Traceys, Jasons and Sharons tended to be labelled malingerers, but Fionas, Matthews, Sarahs and Elizabeths were treated more favourably. The researcher, Luke Birmingham, of Southampton University, said: “This study shows doctors are not immune to this sort of prejudice.” But I bet Luke would be pleased to hear that he’s got a sexually attractive forename.

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