Can A New Name Open Closed Doors? Foreign-Sounding Names and Immigrant Earnings

Personal names are visible markers of ethnic identity that can shape access to economic opportunity. While field experiments provide ample evidence that foreign-sounding names limit immigrants’ access to employment, far less is known about how names shape career trajectories beyond the point of hire in naturally unfolding labor market settings. Using administrative data with longitudinal information on personal names, we investigate how changing from a foreign-sounding to a name more typical in the native-born majority improves the labor market outcomes of male immigrants. Covering the entire population in Norway, these data allow us to calculate names’ ethnic distinctiveness and observe when individuals pursue a name assimilation strategy. We find that adopting a mainstream name increases non-Western immigrants’ earnings by approximately 20 percent on average over the subsequent five years, and raises the probability of stable employment by around 4–6 percentage points. The earnings gains stem primarily from movement into stable employment and higher-paying jobs rather than within-workplace earnings growth, indicating that name assimilation reduces barriers to job entry rather than influencing advancement within organizations. These findings provide rare causal evidence on the economic payoff of symbolic assimilation and show how ethnic signals continue to structure opportunity in contemporary labor markets.