If you’re not getting ahead at work, and your name is difficult to pronounce, you might want to consider changing it.

New research suggests hav­ing a sim­ple, eas­y-to-pronounce name may help you win allies and favor in the work­place.

“People tend to feel more positive about things that are easy to process mentally, and with work colleagues that means better relationships,” said Ad­am L. Al­ter, an assistant professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, who collaborated on the study with Peter Koval of the University of Leuven, Belgium, and Simon M. Laham of the University of Melbourne in Australia.

The academics an­a­lyzed 500 first and last names of U.S. lawyers at firms of varying sizes and found that those with names that are easier to pro­nounce­ rise up the ranks of their companies more quickly. The same outcome is likely in other industries, Al­ter said.

Another facet of the research looked at the name-pronunciation effect for names from a number of regions, including Asian, West­ern and East­ern Eu­ro­pe­an nations. Using a mock ballot with names of varying complexity, all taken from each of the regions in order to avoid ethnic biases, the re­sults suggested that peo­ple with names that are eas­i­er to pronounce are more likely to be fa­vored for po­lit­i­cal of­fice and job pro­mo­tions.

The re­search builds on an ear­li­er study by Alter that found that companies with simpler names tend to out­per­form si­m­i­lar stocks with more com­plex names on their market debuts.

Carlos Osorio / AP

The General Motors headquarters in downtown Detroit.

By Colleen Kane, CNBC.com

With common factors such as traffic, crowds, noise, grime, and crime, cities are generally not perceived as oases of calm.

But what makes one city more stressful to live in than the next? To gauge the stress of residents in American cities, data cruncher Sperling’s Best Places considered the 50 largest metropolitan areas (which includes suburbs). The team considered the following factors: divorce rate, commute times, unemployment, violent crime, property crime, suicides, alcohol consumption, mental health, sleep troubles, and the annual amount of cloudy days.

There wasn’t much variance in several categories. For alcohol consumption per month, each of the top 10 cities ranged from 8.7 to 14 drinks per month; for days per month with poor mental health, the metro areas ranged from 2.9 to 4.3; and for days per month of poor sleep, the range was 6.9 to 8.2.

The data behind this list does not paint a cheery picture. The Sunshine State, in particular, seems much less sunny — dismal, even. What follows are the five metropolitan areas that fared the worst using the above criteria.

5. Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Michigan
Population: 1,918,288
Divorced: 11.4%
Commute time – minutes: 27
Unemployment: 15.7%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 1111.2
Property crime per 100,000 population: 4,152.4
Suicides per 100,000 population: 9.6
Cloudy days annually: 180

Standout factors: The Detroit metropolitan area is in the 100th percentile for violent crime and property crime. It also ranks in the 97th percentile for poor mental health days per month, though it is in the second percentile for alcohol consumption per month.

4. Jacksonville, Florida
Population: 1,374,303
Divorced: 12.3%
Commute time – minutes: 28.0
Unemployment: 10.4%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 557
Property crime per 100,000 population: 3,772.4
Suicides per 100,000 population: 13.9
Cloudy days annually: 139

Standout factor: Jacksonville is in the 95th percentile for divorces.

3. Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Florida
Population: 2,472,015
Divorced: 11.5%
Commute time – minutes: 33.2
Unemployment: 12.5%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 733.3
Property crime per 100,000 population: 4,678.3
Suicides per 100,000 population: 9.3
Cloudy days annually: 117

Standout factors: Metropolitan Miami is in the 97th percentile for property crime, and 95th percentile for violent crime, but is in the fourth percentile for alcohol consumption.

2. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nevada
Population: 1,908,008
Divorced: 13.2%
Commute time – minutes: 27
Unemployment: 14%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 763.4
Property crime per 100,000 population: 2,921.9
Suicides per 100,000 population: 18
Cloudy days annually: 65

Standout factors: Las Vegas-Paradise is in the 100th percentile for divorces, but it had the least cloudy days of the 50 cities analyzed.

1. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida
Population: 2,780,818
Divorced: 12.3%
Commute time – minutes: 28.3
Unemployment: 11.2%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 500
Property crime per 100,000 population: 3,387.2
Suicides per 100,000 population: 15.5
Cloudy days annually: 127

Standout factor: Tampa is in the 97th percentile for suicides.

Click here to see all of America's most stressful cities on CNBC.com.

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