There may be a reason I’m so awful: the Germans call it “Kevinism”

According to Discover Magazine‘s DiscoBlog (love to love it, baaaaay-by), there might be a reason I’m such an abhorrent person. It’s called “Kevinism,” and it basically states that German people named Kevin are less desirable, less successful at online dating, and more or less ne’er-do-wells.

Sounds accurate.

That all sounds quite dire, but we’re gonna have to bust out the “correlation does not imply causation” card here. While exotic baby names may seem like a disease that most commonly afflicts celebrities, in Germany it’s really about the other end of the economic spectrum. Anarticle on Kevinism [note: this article contains a lot of German] in Die Welt quotes sociologist Jürgen Gerhards, who asserts that Anglo-American names (Mandy, Justin, Angelina to name a few more) are a lower-class phenomenon. It seems that no one has actually crunched the numbers to prove that, but jokes like “Only druggies and Easterners are named Kevin” suggest he’s on to something. (Any Germans want to weigh in?) It seems very possible that German Kevins’ smoking and lack of education has as much to do with their family background as it does with their name.

“Only druggies or Easterners are named Kevin.”

Pfsh. Germans.

Thanks to Jen (JediMama on blogspot) who made me aware of this via Facebook.