Call Me by Your Name: Immigration Restriction Laws and Child Naming in the Early Twentieth Century United States

Dafeng Xu , University of Minnesota

Researchers point out that names are signals of cultural identity. I follow the classical measure of name foreignness and estimate effects of immigration restriction laws on child naming in the early twentieth century U.S. I find significant evidence that after the passage of immigration restriction laws, there was a particular decline in name foreignness among second-generation immigrant children whose parents were from more restricted countries. The results are robust to changes to samples and specifications, and the effects of immigration restriction laws on child naming were unlikely to be through other channels, such as parents' assimilation and selection on migration.

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 Presented in Session 195. History, Demography, and Racial Inequality