With the rise of the internet, it became easier than ever to mine examples. One respondent trawled through the American Directory of Physicians to reveal a dermatologist called Rash, a rheumatologist named Knee, an orthopaedic surgeon named Bone and a psychiatrist named Couch. There were 18 doctors with the surname of Doctor, 10 named Blood, 19 named Fix, Cure or Heal, and 65 named Flesh, Gore, Ache or Looney.
In 2002, nominative determinism became a serious study in its own right, with the publication of a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology entitled 'Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions'. On the assumption that 'people prefer things that are connected to the self (for example, the letters in one's name)', authors Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg and John Jones concluded that people are disproportionately likely to 'choose careers whose labels resemble their names (for example, people named Dennis or Denise are over-represented among dentists).'
