As you probably know, unless your name is Jihad, you can easily get discriminated against here in Germany. Especially here in grade school, or so I just read.

Sorry, that was a bit misleading about Jihad. There actually are a few other names that are still okay here too. A study just indicated that if your name is Sophie or Alexander or Maximilian or Katharina, for instance, German grade school teachers will treat you with a whole lot more respect than if your name is Justin, Chantal, Jaquelin or Marvin.

Or as one German teacher summed it up, involuntarily, when asked about one particular name: “Kevin is not a name, it’s a diagnosis.”

Funny, those names don’t sound all that funny to me. They almost sound, well, like American names. Hey, wait a minute…

“Eine Studie zeigt, dass Grundschulpädagogen Vorurteile gegen bestimmte Vornamen hegen – und manche Kinder deswegen sogar als besonders verhaltensauffällig einstufen.”