A child's face evolves to match their name.
A child's face evolves to go with their name
Experts set out to study why a majority of people can guess the name of a stranger with up to 40 per cent accuracy and have theorised that facial evolution could be the answer.
A team at Reichman University in Israel enlisted both children and adults to match faces to names and found that participants of all ages could correctly match adults but were not as successful when it came to children.
The researchers concluded: "Children do not look like their names yet, but adults who have lived with their name longer do tend to look like their names.
"These results suggest that people develop according to the stereotype bestowed on them at birth.
"We are social creatures who are affected by nurture: One of our most unique and individual physical components, our facial appearance, can be shaped by a social factor, our name."