What’s in a name? It turns out, a lot. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we make assumptions about people based on their name. Some research even shows that our names change us. We may even alter our appearance over time for better congruence with our given name.
No wonder finding the right name is a decision parents struggle mightily with. It’s a choice that holds a lot of weight, which is why millions of social media users are fascinated by the curious case of Christopher Stewart, the 40-year-old Black woman from New York.
Woman named Christopher Stewart goes viral
Reenacting a current popular trend, Stewart recently filmed a video for TikTok in the style of a faux Netflix documentary.
As she sits down and gets comfortable in front of the camera, dramatic music plays and the caption reads:
“Preparing for my Netflix documentary on my parents giving me a white male name to get my resume pulled and I show up a qualified black woman”
The video pulled in nearly two million views and commenters were clamoring for Stewart to give them more than just a tease. They wanted to hear the full story.
“Yes, my name, my real name, my government name is Christopher Stewart,” she said in a follow-up video. “When my parents found out that they were having a girl, they were just like ‘We need to get her in every door she wants to walk into before they see who she is.’”
So, they gave her what Stewart describes as a “plain, white male name.”
She does not have a middle name.
Stewart says her parents just wanted to get her in the door. They knew giving her a name that would easily be construed as male on paper, and likely as a white male, would get her in a lot of rooms. She would have to take it from there.
“We don’t know where life is gonna take her. But we do know that we need to give her the best education we can, the best morals we can, the best integrity we can, so when she walks through that door it’s all on her after that,” she recalls them telling her.
The wildest part of the story? The name works
It’s a bold strategy, giving a girl a name like Christopher. The reasoning makes sense, but there’d always be a risk of bullying, teasing, or Stewart being unhappy about her given name.
Luckily, she says that’s not the case.
“My name does what it’s supposed to do. I love my name. I don’t regret my name,” she says.
Stewart tells TODAY that potential employers have reacted in different ways to her name not matching their expectations. One told her over the phone, “I don’t have time to play games with you. When Christopher Stewart gets home, tell him to call me,” before hanging up. Another said, “Wow, you really are a girl,” when they met for an in-person interview, adding, “We were confused on the phone, but welcome.”
Stewart has excelled in her career in the restaurant industry. A classically trained chef from a top culinary school, she spent years running the kitchen in some of New York’s top restaurants. These days, she prefers to leave the cooking to someone else, and has a lucrative career managing reservations for three different area restaurants.
Chefs at in-demand restaurants are overwhelmingly male. Stewart tells TODAY that her name helped her land more than one job interview she might not have otherwise booked.
“When I walk into an interview, there’s that initial shock,” Stewart said. “Then it turns into curiosity. Then it turns into a real conversation.”
Despite that shock and curiosity, Stewart says she thinks her name fits. She only briefly considered changing it, years ago, but has grown to love it.
“When you look at me, you see me, you’re like ‘yeah your name should be Christopher.’”
Christopher Stewart’s parents were ahead of their time, and the data
Name bias in hiring has been a problem for a while. It’s only gotten worse with AI screenings and ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) that dismiss candidates automatically.
The bias and discrimination are worst for Black women, who are underrepresented in almost every area—less likely to be hired, less likely to get promoted, most likely to be underpaid.
Recent research uncovered that male-associated names on resumes were favored by LLMs (like ChatGPT) in 51.9% of cases, while white-associated names were preferred in an astounding 85.1% of cases studied.
With all that in mind, it’s clear that someone named Christopher Stewart would have an advantage over, say, Chrissy—which was her preferred nickname as a child. Christopher is also a fairly common name for Black men, but it’s easy to imagine a hiring manager assuming a Christopher Stewart is white, or almost certainly a man.
That’s a major leg up, and kudos to Stewart’s parents for being savvy enough to seek out any small advantage they could find for their daughter. They’re also not the only ones.
Other Black women weighed in with their own traditionally male names
Author Austin Channing Brown, a Black woman, is another example of parents giving their Black female child a white-sounding, traditionally masculine name. In a 2020 article about her best-selling book, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, Brown writes, “…my parents decided to outwit everyone by giving their daughter a white man’s name.”
In the comments of Stewart’s video, Black women named Chandler, Ryan, Cornelius, and Blake flocked to share their own stories. One mother wrote: “Me naming my kids Channing and Carrington because I’m an A’Shaunda and everyone knows I’m black before I walk in the door.”
Hopefully we’re not too far away from a world where having a Black, female-sounding name doesn’t put you at an immediate disadvantage for opportunities. In the meantime… game on.
