OU physics junior Steven McLean Hefner’s middle name hails back two generations of men with the McLean name. By passing on the name, Hefner’s parents demonstrated a male honor-based cultural phenomenon, according to a study recently released by OU psychology researchers.

Psychology researchers Ryan Brown, Mauricio Carvallo and Mikiko Imura released a study last week showing the correlation between OU students' and Americans' naming habits and their cultural values.

The researchers wanted to understand what causes people, as in Hefner’s case, to pass names on from one male to another, and what this says about the culture they’re living in.

Brown said using patronyms and matronyms indicates a family's dedication to upholding its honor, known as “honor naming.”

Cultural values in some parts of the world — particularly the Americas, the Middle East and countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea —emphasize the continuation of male first names and the sense of masculinity and power they suggest, Brown said.

"We identify honor states in the U.S. as being in the South or the West, where, like in other honor cultures worldwide, reputation management is a key aspect of everyday social life," Brown said.

In these areas, there is a higher than average rate of men who are trying to maintain a reputation of being tough, strong and brave, Brown said. On the other hand, women try to retain a reputation of loyalty and chastity, but maybe only toughness secondarily.

"I think honor culture influences are probably diluting with time, but they're still alive and well, and you can measure them in OU students," Brown said.

Brown's lab maintains measurements of how prevalent honor-related names are present in the OU student body.

"We found in our research that guys tend to prefer to name their future sons after themselves or their fathers or their grandfathers,” Brown said. “You don't see the same pattern with girls and matronyms. There's such a big influence on masculinity, male lineage."

The first study surveyed the honor value preferences of a sample of university students enrolled in "Introduction to Psychology," a general education course that provides a reliable and diverse cross section of students, Brown said.

"There was a significant link between having these family honor values and desiring to use patronyms," he said.

The second study looked at the naming cycles of people born throughout the country in the years 1960, 1984 and 2008. It measured the prevalence of recycled names of both genders in these three generations.

Brown and his team found that honor states like Oklahoma, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and others have higher instances of male name recycling than non-honor states.

"There's a connection between the recycling of these male names and other male honor-oriented phenomena," Brown said.

Increased rates of suicide, military enlistment and state-sponsored executions are noticeable in these states, which reflects the culture of these regions, he said.

The last two studies looked into how honor threats influence people's tendencies to choose honor naming patterns for their lineages, Brown said.

The researchers set up a hypothetical threat for undergraduate participants to respond to for the third study and then compiled national naming data from Social Security Administration two years before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks for the final study.

The resulting data decisively indicated that honor states saw substantial upticks in patronym usage following the terrorist attacks, but no significant change could be found for non-honor states, according to the study results.

This recent trend among honor states has continued as long as 2009, which was the last year Brown and his team analyzed for the study, he said.

For the fourth study, the team randomly assigned participants to think about a collective honor threat or a neutral topic and then instructed them to complete a survey about the naming preferences for their future children.

"Among the guys in the study who had taken time to consider the occurrence of a collective honor threat, like a nationwide terrorist attack, and also endorsed honor naming values, they (subsequently) showed an increased desire to use patronyms," Brown said.

The team's research has served as a way to look beyond people's explicit cultural preferences and delve into how they act based on their deeper values. These honor states, and the widespread practice of patronym usage in general, reveals the masculine preferences among communities as well as individuals, Brown said.

"The way we name things that are important, whether it's our businesses, monuments, cities or our children, is reflecting something that's important to us," he said.

However, Steven McLean Hefner feels more connected with a modern American culture that puts less emphasis on lineage.

"I see no reason to continue the McLean name (with my kids)," he said.