"That happens sometimes."

"Mm-hm. I was very pleased with myself."

"I think that's a common feature of ponies getting their cutie marks!"

"Have you ever wondered why so many ponies have names and cutie marks that are alike?" Clarity says. "I mean, not everypony, you don't, but my parents didn't know that much about me when they named me - Bell isn't even a family name - and then poof."

"I wonder that a lot," she says. "My two basic theories are that ponies' personalities tend to turn out to match their names, or that cutie marks are predetermined and what somepony's parents name them is somehow influenced by what their cutie mark is going to be. But I've never seen any strong evidence for one or the other particularly."

"Yeah, it's pretty much got to be one or the other, or maybe a 'sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, sometimes neither' situation. I'm tempted to guess that in my case it's the name matching the predetermined cutie mark, because if I were being steered to match 'Clarity Bell' I'd probably be the musician people tend to mistake me for."

"But on the other hand, if you start out with a personality that might not have that much to do with your name and get steered toward something that fits, you could end up with things that fit oddly. Like 'Clarity Bell' for a clear thinker."

"It's a weird fit either way. My personality's been pretty stable since I was a very little pony, though."

"'Steering' might not be the right word. It might be more like... your personality's going to be a certain way when you're born, however it would've turned out if you didn't have a name at all, and then when you get your name it gets tweaked to fit. I guess that's testable, but I'm not going to kidnap a lot of baby ponies and raise them with no names or weird names just to see what happens."

"Oh goodness," giggles Clarity. "Yeah, this is the kind of thing that can only be studied anecdotally or maybe statistically if you find a way to quantify it."

"If I ever get my hooves on some free time and a lot of census data that includes cutie mark pictures and personality surveys, I might just try it. But that's a big 'if'."

"There's a little census data like that, but not a lot. Bell Curve - no relation - went through what I think was the entire town of Kimblewick, but Kimblewick only has about a hundred ponies living there and he didn't follow up."

"Probably not enough to really get anywhere with, then."

"Yeah, it'd be a big project. And it'd be interesting, but I'm not sure what we'd do if we knew. Name our foals after things we wanted them to grow up to be if it were that direction of mechanism, I guess, but that probably wouldn't always turn out like you'd expect anyhow."

"Yeah. I think I'd still want to know, though, even if it wasn't going to be directly useful. It's just such an obvious coincidence."

Clarity nods. "Well, maybe someday somepony will pick up the project and pick at it long enough to draw conclusions."

"We can only hope!"

"Aww, ducklings," says Clarity, as they approach a pond. "Do ducks get muffins or something else?"

Clarity supervises the ducks, more interested in their cuteness than in what they have to say.

They are quite cute. One of the littlest ducklings decides to oversee this meeting from on top of its mother's head, but finds itself unable to balance there and keeps falling back into the water.

"Awwww!"

"Friendly bears?"

"Friendly enough. I wouldn't recommend antagonizing them, but they're not going to try to eat you if all you do is show up and watch while I talk to them."