The paper - http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6822 - explains that the names were taken from Bertrand and Mullainathan's 2003 study looking at racial discrimination and names on resumes - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 - and a study from Freaknomics - http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/FryerLevitt200... . Both studies used actual names given to black and white children in Massachusetts and California.