CHILDREN'S names matter. Most people agree on that. How or why, we might not be entirely sure, but we know that a good moniker is worth straining over. Having been through the baby-naming process last year, I recall the doubts and stress surrounding it. Two days after the birth of our child, my partner and I faced the proposition of taking our son home without anything to call him. While he was in utero, we had referred to him as "Genghis", but this seemed increasingly inappropriate.

My partner suggested Langman, an obscure reference to the fact that our baby had a long body. Delirious with sleep-deprivation, I conceded that I liked "L" names. He ran through the Ls in the naming book and came up with Louis, which he recalled was the name of his great grandfather. "Yes, I like the L sound," I repeated.

Is all this strain worth it? Scientists, sociologists and economists have in recent years been looking into the ways in which names affect not just how we are perceived, but also how we see ourselves. Dr Richard Wiseman, an expert in many of the quirkier aspects of science, is one such researcher, currently conducting an online experiment (thenameexperiment.com) into the 10 most common male and female names and their associations.

"I'm wondering," he says, "if one of them turns out to be the most desirable name, whether every parent will then give it to their child." Mostly, it seems, though, that we overrate the significance of a name. In Freakonomics, the book in which Stephen D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner apply economic theory to some of the quirkier aspects of life, an entire chapter is devoted to whether names have any impact on a person's destiny. "Many parents seem to believe that a child cannot prosper unless it is hitched to the right name," they write, before going on to question the significance of the naming process, as well as many of the other things parents worry about.

For comedian Jojo Donaldson, the right name was Ruaridh. The first of her four children was named after her Jack Russell terrier, Rory. "I just loved the name, which is why I called my dog Rory. I like Rory and Cory. I like the ring of it. Whether it's Rory or Ruaridh, there's something about the sound of it."

For many, the sound of a name is what matters most. After Ruaridh, Donaldson found herself continuing on a string of other Gaelic names: Ciara, Eilidh and Fynn. Fynn, it should be noted, is a girl. Though Gaelic names are increasing in popularity, when Ruaridh was born, this was a fairly unconventional one. Ruaridh, it appears, has revelled in it. "I think it's different. I think I'm a different person. I always try to be the centre of attention, so I kind of think it helps towards that."

Almost all parents who have a liking for an unconventional name must ask themselves the same question. Is it going to allow space for the expression of my child's own unique self, or is it setting him or her up as the playground punchbag? Donaldson's children appear to have weathered their names well. Only Fynn, it seems, has ever complained. "She likes the name now, but she did give me a hard time a little while ago, saying, My name is rubbish. It's a boy's name, I want to change it.' She wanted something like Lucy."

So, to what extent can a name significantly affect our destiny? Wiseman confirms that the associations of people's names can indeed affect the way they see themselves. "If your surname has a particular meaning, then often you drift towards that. You could say that maybe the reason I've ended up being an academic is because I'm called Wiseman. It has a subconscious effect."

Anecdotally, of course, there are always examples which defy these trends. Take the true story told in Freakonomics of two boys born to Robert Lane, one called Winner, the other called Loser. Loser Lane grew up to be a sergeant in the New York Police Department; Winner grew up to have an extensive criminal record. The moral of this story? If names are a factor they are fairly minor compared with some of the other powers at work in our lives. Like Richard Wiseman, the authors of Freakonomics are keen to distinguish the effect of the name itself from the way in which it is simply an indicator of a whole set of other factors in a person's upbringing. Levitt and Dubner, who focused on research into the impact of names more commonly associated with black people than whites, noted: "The data shows that, on average, a person with a distinctively black name does have a worse life outcome than one with a distinctively white name. But it isn't the fault of their names. If two black boys, Jake Williams a distinctively white name and DeShawn Williams distinctively black, are born into the same neighbourhood and into the same familial and economic circumstances, they would likely have similar life outcomes."

That said, names do appear to play a role in how we are initially perceived. In a US experiment published in the Journal Of Educational Psychology, teachers were asked to mark eight separate versions of the essay What I Did On Sunday. Different names were attached to the essays, all of which had been rated for desirability. It was found that the teachers gave significantly higher grades to the papers "written" by the students with the desirable names.

But what makes a name "desirable"? People have different ideas of the positive attributes they would like their children's names to convey. Often, for those who choose an idiosyncratic name, the quality they are trying to gift their children is eccentricity itself. Blue Hockey-Martin, for instance, is the seven-year-old daughter of Dennis Martin and Jo Hockey. When I visit their family home, Blue is hiding in her room, reluctant to come out and talk. I am told that Blue is not normally like this. In fact, she is quite precocious and likes chatting with adults.

Dennis Martin says he had always intended to call his daughter Blue, ever since at 24 years old, he met a girl called Blue. For him, the associations of the name include "the blues. And the Joni Mitchell album Blue, which I really love". Before the baby was born, he had imagined she would become an artist or something similarly unconventional. And does it look like she will be? "She is quite creative."

So has Blue's personality been shaped by her name? Or is the name she has been given just part of the unconventional environment in which she lives? Or, to dig even further, is her personality simply a reflection of her idiosyncratic genes, genes that are also in her father? Richard Wiseman warns against jumping to conclusions, and cites a recent University of Florida report which showed that girls with more feminine names are less likely to study maths or physics after the age of 16. "It could be," he says, "that the names are causing some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy or it could be that families who are giving the more unorthodox masculine-sounding names are then also encouraging more diverse career routes. So it could be the effect of the name or it could be the family environment."

Meanwhile, one of the difficulties with trying to piece together a complete view of the impact of a name, is that so much changes over time. It's not just that the popularity or desirability of certain names changes, but that the whole cultural mix and level of diversity of names changes too. In Britain a century ago, the top 10 male names represented 80% of the male population; now they represent less than 30%. Even if one was to be given, at birth, say, the name Dave, it's likely that in 10 years' time that name would have quite a different feel to it, perhaps because some lad-oriented television channel has transformed it into a shorthand for blokeishness. Of course, one might then pick again, choosing a new name by deed poll, continuingly renaming oneself as each trend moved on. But in the constant rebranding of self lies a kind of madness. Most of us don't want that. For all those baby angsts, we know there is only so much in a name.

Dr Richard Wiseman is at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on March 25, www.sciencefestival.co.uk. Participate in the Name Experiment online at www.nameexperiment.com