Boys named Sue don't fare very well — Johnny Cash was right

University of Florida economist David N. Figlio burst into the news earlier this year with his report on how children with unusual names don't fare as well in school as those named more conventionally.

Now he's back with the results of a new study: what happens to boys named Sue and the like.

It's ain't pretty, either for them or their classmates.

Johnny Cash was right after all.

Here's a news story about Figlio's latest work, which was reported in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The Unusual Name Game

We know it's tough being a boy named Sue.

Now it turns out it's also a problem to be a classmate of a boy named Sue, according to University of Florida economist David Figlio.

Figlio found that boys with first names typically given to girls were more likely to misbehave in junior high school than students with less distinctive monikers.

And boys in classes with boys who have feminine-sounding names were more likely to have discipline problems and lower standardized test scores, Figlio reports in a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Two months ago, Figlio found that children with unusual names don't fare as well in class.

In his latest analysis, he used detailed data collected on more than 76,000 students in the late 1990s from a large school district in Florida.

In exchange for access to student records, including names and disciplinary histories, Figlio promised not to reveal the school district or otherwise identify individual students.

Overall Figlio found that nearly 2 percent of all boys in his sample had names that were overwhelmingly given to girls.

That means the typical Florida middle-schooler will share about one out of every three classes with a boy named Sue ... or Ashley, Courtney or Shannon.