Sharón Lynn Wyeth on the Letters in Your Name

Interview with Sharón Lynn Wyeth by Phil Bolsta

 
Watch Sharón Lynn Wyeth’s interview:

 
Welcome, Sharón. Thank you for joining us today.

It's lovely to be here with you, Phil. I have so looked forward again to speaking with you.
 

Allow me to introduce you. International name expert Sharón Lynn Wyeth is the founder and creator of Neimology science, the study of the placement of the letters in a name. Her radio show, Know the Name, Know the Genius in You, was created to show how individuals use their talents as shown in their names to overcome their challenges and provide a service that benefits humankind.

Sharón, how did you become an expert on names and how did you come up with this system?

Well, it started so many years ago when it was my seventh year of teaching, and I was doing the seating chart in a classroom, and I realized that my brain was saying, Oh, don't put Joshua next to Julie, because together they're going to be clowns. Stephanie's gonna be stubborn, so put her over here on the side. Derek's gonna need extra help, so put him up close. That is the thinking that I normally do once I know the kids really well, and it dawned on me once I started doing the seating chart for the fourth class that, Hey, wait, al I have is their names.

So I thought, Okay, my brain has picked up something, some kind of pattern. Now, how do I make what's unconscious conscious? Now, I'm a math major and I have my master's degree, so my brain is really good at patterns. So I went back and I decided to write down my impression of every single one of my 150 students by their names. I put it aside. I said, let me get to know the kids, and I'll look at it at winter break.

When I looked at it, I was astonished at the accuracy. So I went, Okay, so how does a mathematician go about making what's unconscious, conscious? We start with all these charts in the scientific method, and you go, okay. I have eight Davids in my life. What have I observed about all of my Davids? What's the same? That's gotta be coming from the name David. What's different? It's gotta be from their middle or their last name. That's how I literally started, and it took me 15 years to figure out all of the nuances. Then I got invited to come speak in over 70 countries. So we tested it with at least 100 people in each country about the accuracy and what did they think. So that's how Neimology science came about.
 

Wow, given that you were a math major, I'm even more curious about how Neimology science is different from numerology.

Well, I don't know numerology, and I want to state that first. Numerology uses numbers. But this only uses the letters, and you don't have to know any math whatsoever, because everybody assumes it's got to have some math in it somewhere, but it's the thinking pattern. It's the logic pattern.

So what I found is that there's four placements in a name. There's the first vowel, position of the first name, and that gives us our communication style. The first letter of the first name is our overarching umbrella for what we're here to learn, and it's also the first impression that we give to people. Then the last letter in the name is our lasting impression that we have with people, and it's also the first thing people will talk about us behind our backs. Okay?

The rest of the letters in there are called the middle letters, and those are the subtle qualities and characteristics that it takes us a while to get to know somebody. Then just like in a classroom, when you have two people fitting together and their friends, they're really talkative, but if they don't like each other they act totally differently. It's the same type of thing with the letters. You gotta learn that each one has a personality and how they play with the other letters.

So, for an example, I have a mnemonic device for everything. So Cs are charming and charismatic to cover their need to be in charge and in control, okay? So they love to be the one in charge. Then you have an H, that is, what I call my holy letter, because they just get in the river and they go where life takes them. They just trust that spirit's gonna get them where they need to go. So they really let life and let go. Now you put a C next to an H, so C wants to control and H wants to do anything but, and so like in Michael and Cheryl and Micha, in those names, it's like they're in conflict. They do everything the hard way, because they're constantly saying to themselves, Do I take charge here? Am I supposed to let go here? How much in charge? How much letting go? So they've got this constant conflict, and so they end up doing everything the hard way.
 

Are first names more significant then than middle or last names?

I love this question, Phil. The first name is the essence of who you are and what you're about in this lifetime. Your middle name lets us know what last lifetime was last, what you finished learning, what you brought forward then as your gifts for this one, and what you're still working on. If you don't have a middle name, it's because you completed all of it. So not to go, I don't have one, did I not have past lives, okay?

Then the last name represents our environment, so it takes both nature and nurture and both of those are represented in the name. Because you can have the same first name and you put them in different environments and they're gonna react differently. So I kind of look at it like the first name is what we have in our kitchen, and the last name are the recipes we can make out of those ingredients.
 

So did you come to these conclusions just by trial and error, or just by testing out all of your theories, or what?

Three things: trial and error, and a lot of testing went on. But also, I have read spiritual books from beginning to end, and for most of my growing-up years, and then starting at age 18 I became a meditator. So I think the combination was from all the reading and being naturally intuitive and all the meditation, I got a lot of help from the other side. So they guided me all the way through.
 

Wow. So it seems like names are randomly assigned in a not at all scientific way. Are you suggesting that on some level, our parents intuitively knew what to call us?

Well, when there were still only seven religions on the planet, according to Dr. Eugene Whitworth, that they all believed in 10 common ideas or ideologies, and one of them was that the person coming in, the soul that's coming in, impresses upon the one naming them what they want to be called. So if that's the case, we all name ourselves, so of course they'd fit. Now, there is a science out there called Cymatics. It's C-Y-M-A-T-I-C-S, and it has literally shown that our cells can literally change with different vibrational sounds. What sound do we resonate with the most but the sound of our name? Because when somebody says, "Who are you?" You answer with your name as if that says it all. And of course it does, if you know Neimology science. So I think there's both a religious answer and a scientific answer for that.
 

So our names can influence our character and our character can influence our names?

I don't know if character influences our names. Our names definitely influence our character. The birth name, the one that's on the birth certificate, is literally the blueprint for this lifetime — and when we're gonna be focused on what, what we've come to learn, and what we've come to share. Now, sometimes we change our names, okay? So we can go by a different name. The name that we're using on a regular basis shows the personality and how we're going about the lessons that were given to us in the birth name.

So I was just gonna say, so we can change our name. A lot of women change their last name, and now, a few men have when they get married. What they're doing is they're changing their environment, and you think about it. You think, yes, my environment used to be greatly influenced by my birth family and who I grew up with, and now I'm changing it and now it's gonna be greatly influenced by my spouse and his family and his friends. So the new last name literally represents the new influence coming into your world.
 

So if someone changes their first name, are they just reflecting better who they are and their personality, or does that change them on some other level?

It definitely affects them greatly, because now they're resonating... or it takes seven years to fully resonate with the new name, okay? So it kind of comes in like the sands of time through the hourglass. So yes, it affects them. Some people choose a new name that just says, I'm gonna do the same lessons. I'm just gonna do them differently. Sometimes we make them easier for ourselves, sometimes we make them harder. Sometimes people will choose a new name and I kinda look at them. I think, You didn't change a thing. It's just a different way of representing the exact same thing. Because in our names, there's always two or three or four ways that represent the same thing, so we all don't have to have the same letters if we're working on the same quality.

So like when a lot of people call me and say, "I'm thinking about changing my name." Or "I want the name of a business or the name of a product or the name of a book or whatever," I look at all names as if you're changing your own name, I want to reinforce the same lessons that you came to learn, but I want to make sure your letters say, let's do it the easy way instead of the hard way. I don't want to create something within the new name that's going to say, oh, now we've got this new thing that's really gonna take our time and attention because now we've introduced something new that we've also got to conquer.

The same thing when we're naming a product or a business. It's, we're gonna look at it and make sure that it represents who you are, it will pull in the type of clients that you want, and that it doesn't have any subliminal thing in there that is gonna push people away.
 

Well, is there such a thing as a bad name?

People ask me all that all the time, and what my answer is, all names come with challenges. All names come with gifts. So a good name is one that has the appropriate gifts that can help them manage the challenges that they came to learn. Is there a bad name? Rarely. Most names are fairly well balanced. Occasionally, I have come across a name and I've just gone, OMG, I am so sorry for you with this name. Of course, I don't want to say that, but that's how I feel.

There was one time when I was up in Washington and we were doing this fundraiser for a project and to donate the money. So all the kids came up and handed $5 to the person collecting the money, and then I did a really quickie name read on them. I went around everybody in their group, and then that group moved on. There was this one group of six boys that came up, and I'll never forget them, because I looked at this one name and I thought, "Oh my gosh. How am I gonna find something positive in here?" I put his card on the bottom. I did everybody's else's first. When it came to him and I looked at his name, all I could see is he was a date raper. It was all through his name, and here I want to give him something positive or something helpful. So what I said to him was, "You know, touch is really important to you." And of course, the other boys had already seen the accuracy of Neimology, and they go, Ha, ha, ha, she's got you, because they all knew what he was doing. I said, "The thing I can help you with the most is that your main lesson in life is to learn how your actions influence or cause an emotional result in somebody else. So if you can think about what you're going to be causing in somebody else's life before you take an action, maybe you'll stay out of jail." Okay, next group.

So there have been names that I've come across that I just look at, a few psychopathic names where the person's a real, real psychopath. In a few of those names, and I just look at them and I think, I feel badly and how do you present that in a positive way that can be beneficial to that person? That's the real challenge.
 

Well, it sounded like you handled that well and I hope it planted a seed in him.

Oh, I'm just so hoping, because the whole purpose of knowing what your name means is so that you can overcome the challenges in your name, and when you go to do something, you go, oh yeah, that's the reason I do that. Do I really want to? As you make it conscious, it's easier to change those habits, and then take it to the level of something that's really good to the positive. So Phil, can I give you an example of that?
 

Yes.

Okay, so in the letters S-T, it represents stubborn. If you're stubborn, you're getting in your own way from progressing forward. But that's the challenge. But in the letter combination S-T anywhere in your name, it also means persistence. So persistence means I'm still open-minded. I'm still listening to other people. I'm just not giving up. So you see a lot of people that have really high degrees have an S-T somewhere in their name because that's one of the ways, the persistence to get through all that schooling shows up.

So if you're starting to get stubborn, if you know that it also means persistence, you can say, Oh yeah, do I want to get in my own way, or do I want to keep listening to others and keep going forward? Do I want to change my stubbornness into persistence? So that's one of the ways knowing what everything says that you can go, oh yeah. Look, this is what I'm doing, and this is how this one gets changed.
 

Well, I apologize for putting you on the spot, but I think an actual example would be helpful. I was going to ask you to examine my name, but you already did to some extent, because my last name Bolsta has an S-T in it. When I was a teenager, my mom brought me to see Jeane Dixon, the astrologer.

I love her. I love her work.
 

She looked at my palm and said that people say you're stubborn, but you're just persistent. That's exactly what you just said, and as I look back as I matured, that stubbornness did grow into persistence and perseverance. What would the name Phil signify and does it matter that it's Philip and that I just go by Phil? My middle name is Charles. What does that mean? Can you give an example of that?

Yes, well, I chose the C-H as an example because your middle name was Charles, and I chose the S-T as an example because that's in your last name. And in Philip, is it one L or two?
 

One.

Okay. Which is great. Okay. So some of the things that are indicated in your name is that you think inside the box, outside the box, in the corners of the box, above the box, below the box. There really is no box for you, okay? So you've got this wide diversity of thought, and that's also what you will see apparent in Dr. Phil that's on television. That is in the name Phil for everybody. Now, I've got to drop your name into your last name and see what that influence is, but I wanted to say that's in all Phils, that they're able to do that.

So in your name, it says that you're very family oriented. The majority of your lessons come through family and people you consider family. So you come to learn through relationships. Now, people may pick finances that are resources to learn from, or they may pick health issues, but those are the three categories that we all pick one of and we get our major lessons in that way. And you said, besides just picking relationships, I want to major in this so I'm gonna major in family relationships, so they're gonna take up a lot of your time.

Then the other thing your name indicates is a lot of self-confidence, and that it would grow over time, but it's like you have it the vast majority of your life. It's like something you came in with and something you get to keep. Your name also indicates that inclusivity is very, very important to you. You like to be included with others when they're gonna go do something, and you like to include others. So let's say we all know that you don't like to go bowling, and yet, if we're all around you and we're your friends and your family and we decide to go bowling, you still want to be asked, every single time. "Hey Phil, we're gonna go bowling. Do you want to go with us?" And you go, "No thanks, but thanks for asking." And you really mean thanks for asking because it lets you know you were still included, you were still wanted, and you can choose to say no. It doesn't matter if it's the hundredth time they're going bowling and they know you're gonna say no. You still want to be asked and have that opportunity to say no. So that's in your name.

Another thing in your name is that you're a natural leader, so even if you're not the person in charge, what would happen is the boss would give the directions, and if anybody needed clarification, they would come to you because it would be more comfortable speaking with you and you're the natural leader versus the assigned leader. When I see that in a name, I always think you're better off working for yourself or at least having a great deal of autonomy where you don't have to report to other people very much.

Another thing in your name is that you know how to nurture and take care of others and you're highly competitive. But your competition comes in the family name, which means you can compete more with you within yourself. You're competing against yourself than you are against somebody else. So that's just a few of the things that I see in your name.
 

Well, I'd say that's all accurate except that I do like bowling.

Okay. That's why I said, if you go.
 

I know, but it's very true about the family relationships. I always had a tremendous amount of self-confidence and only looking back now, I'm embarrassed to say that it was far more than what was warranted as I was growing up, because I didn't have the talent to be self-confident about back then. But still, it was there, so that's accurate. When you say it's in my name, are you looking at the combination of letters or just the overall name or how would you interpret that?

I just, because I've done this so many years and because I'm intuitive, I know which things are stronger in a name than which things are weaker, or I should say it another way. When I can look at a name so quickly and analyze it now because I've done thousands of names, it's apparent to me what's most important in a name. That comes out really first, but what I'm doing is I'm simply choosing a letter in a particular position and saying what it means. I'm not giving you all of what that one letter means because I could talk for 15, 20 minutes on one letter and what it means. So what I do is I just take a few letters and take the highlights, and I usually just pick a letter or two in the first name and drop it into the last name and then tell you that portion.
 

Is it possible to, well, obviously, it is possible. I'm interested about this to compare names to know how people will interact with each other, either in a business relationship, family relationship, romantic relationship. Do you get a lot of those questions?

Yes, and all of the above. You can see all of that when you're comparing two names. So you can say ahead of time, this is where the conflicts, the potential conflicts will be, and the beautiful part of names, Phil, is that the answers are in the name. It's like if you talk this way instead of that way or if you don't use these words and you use those words, then that relationship can get along better. Names even tell me what kind of sex they like in the bedroom or not in the bedroom. So I always say from the bedroom to the boardroom, your names will give you your answers.

But let me give you an example of that. So suppose that I'm loading the dishwasher, and my partner comes in and says, "Hey, we're gonna have to run that dishwasher a whole bunch of times, so while you're loading it, because we're not getting enough dishes in there, okay?" What the letters in my name would say is, "I'm gonna shut down and quit." I'm gonna say, "Obviously you know how you want this done. You do it." I'm gonna walk away, and I'm not ever gonna load that dishwasher again. It's like it's now gonna be his job, okay? But if he came to me and instead he said, "You know, I wonder if there's a way that we can load this dishwasher, get the maximum number of dishes in there so they can all get clean so we don't have to run it very often. What do you think?" Now, it's a puzzle, and I don't mind loading that dishwasher and every time I have to load it, it's a new puzzle, and so now it's fun to load the dishwasher.

So in my name, it says, "overly sensitive to criticism," and so I would look at that if the first way he initiated talking about the dishwasher, he was in essence telling me I wasn't good enough. Well, that shuts me down, but on the other hand, if he makes it a challenge, a puzzle, a game, or something else, I'm like, oh good, let's go for it. So if we make suggestions instead of comments or criticisms, we're always on a better path, because one third, actually, of all the people, every name that I've seen, about one-third of the names have that in there, that they want to shut down and quit when criticized. So if we just make suggestions instead, we've already improved our relationships.
 

So that brings up a question. If a name reveals that you are sensitive to criticism, and perhaps you haven't thought of yourself that way before or articulated in quite that way, because it's raised your awareness about this issue, you can then work on it and become less sensitive to criticism. So your name gives you kind of a pathway to self-improvement. Is that fair?

Well, it's giving you a pathway, Phil, to self-awareness, and the answer is yes, because once you become aware of something, now you're the one in charge of it, and do you want it to rule your life subconsciously or do you want to be aware of it so you can go, oh yeah, there I go again wanting to break down because I feel like I'm being criticized.

The other thing is too, once you're aware of that, when somebody comes over and kind of implies that you're not good enough, the response would be, Okay, wait a minute. Can you reword that, because what I heard was your subliminal suggestion that I'm not even smart enough to know how to load a dishwasher, and I don't think that's really what you mean. So could you please reword your request? So you can literally teach people how to talk to you.
 

Yeah, self-awareness is quite a gift.

Yes, it is. And I think that's really the override reason that we're all here, and that we have our individual things underneath that. But it's really to raise our vibration, and we can't do that if we're not self-aware.
 

So with regards to Neimology, what do you do professionally with this skill?

Well, individuals hire me to maximize relationships using the knowledge in how names define us, and together we utilize the power in the names to improve communication and outcomes in both personal and professional relationships. You're automatically empowered when you understand what names reveal about an individual. Then HR committees or departments hire me because they'll look at a job and they'll say, there's four criteria that HR departments are usually looking at when they go to hire. Three of them can be analyzed by the name. The only one that is not is their skill level, okay? It'll tell you if it has the potential to be good in that area, but it won't tell you if they developed that because of when it can happen in the name. The potential's there, but maybe not the interest.

But it will tell you how they're gonna work with others, how they're gonna respond to direction, if they're a team player or not, if they're loyal, if they're honest, if they lie about money, if they can't admit when they've made a mistake. All of that stuff shows up in a name, so HR departments hire me to go through the list of the candidates for a particular job, and they give me the job description. Then I'll say, oh, don't even bother interviewing these people, and here's the interviewing, and here's the ranking.

I was tested over a 6-month time period by different HR companies, and once a week, they'd say, this is who we're hiring and give us your input. What they found is I had over a 90 percent accuracy now four and five years later with who they hired and how long they've stayed. So what they found was really interesting, during that 6-month testing is that their internal system worked the same on who they would recommend. Then they would give me the names once I was on the phone with them, so they knew I couldn't look them up or anything else, and I would come up and say, "Here's your number one choice. Here's your number two."

In that entire 6-month time period, only once did they say, "Okay, our number one is your number two and vice versa." Because other than that, I hit it on the head every time that they interviewed, they called references, they looked at resumes and whatnot, and they would come up after much expense and much time with the same number one and two that I would come up in 15 to 20 minutes.

So that's kind of cool, and then lawyers hire me, and they hire me so that they can see how to present a case in front of the judge or the jury and how those people are gonna respond versus what vocabulary and words they're using because you want everybody to side with your client. So like for an example, let's say the judge had fairness issues in their name, and I wish more of them did. Then, you would constantly say during your procedure, this is what happened. Do you think that's fair? Or you'd say, well, how fair is that? So you'd be pinging their own spot of this is where they already have issues. And at the same time, you want to use the appropriate words and everything so that your client knows you're doing a fabulous job for your client and that even if you lose the case, you could not have done anything differently because they knew you were working really hard. The same thing, like when you're picking the juries off their names, it's like what kind of a jury do you want? Do you want one that's more emotionally based that you can sway? Do you want one's that's logical? What are the qualities you're looking for in your jury and we can look at the names real quickly and say, yes, this one has it, or no, this one doesn't.
 

Well, this has been great. Thank you, Sharón, for sharing your wisdom and insights with us today. I really enjoyed that.

Well, and I have a gift for everybody, all of your listeners, because I just think you're fabulous, Phil. My third book, Know the Name, Know How to Connect, just came out this week, and so if you go to the website, knowthename.com... you gotta wait for the slider that comes up that says that book on it. But you can literally click on the slider and get that book for free.
 

Wow. That is quite a nice parting gift. Thank you. That's very thoughtful, Sharón.

Yeah, so as long as they like ebooks, it's good. We'll give them a copy and my whole goal is, our relationships define our lives and the quality of our lives and how well we're getting along with each other. So it's my contribution to say, Here, this is a hundred-page book. I made it short, simplistic, to the point, and incredibly powerful with the knowledge to literally say, this can help you improve your relationships and therefore have a smoother, more congruent life.
 

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you today.

Phil, it's been my joy and pleasure, and I just love both you and your work. And thank you.

International name expert Sharón Lynn Wyeth is the Founder and Creator of Neimology® Science, the study of the placement of the letters in a name, after 15 years of research followed by three years of testing in over 70 countries. She has evaluated thousands of names since 1995.

Her books include Know the Name; Know the Person… Know the Name; Know the Spirit... Know the Name; Know How to Connect… and Know the Name, Know the Health (coming out in 2019).

You may have seen her on Good Day LA, New York City’s Fox News, Good Morning Arizona, and in various other cities on NBC, CBS & ABC — or heard her interviewed on any one of hundreds of radio shows.

Sharón’s expertise is sought after by Human Resource departments for help with choosing appropriate candidates to interview, by lawyers who want to know how to better present cases to judges, and by individuals who wish to know themselves better and maximize their ability to connect with others. She also assists nationally and internationally in naming new businesses, new products, and when people wish to change their names.

Click here to visit Sharón website.