Left-handers of Winter

The majority tends to rule and this has meant that historically left-handers have copped a hard time, since around 90 per cent of people are right-handers. There was an ancient Greek word for “left” that also meant “awkward” or an “ill-omen”. This continued into Roman times when for instance, if birds flew by you on your right hand side it was considered good luck but that bad luck was in store if they flew on your left. The Latin word “sinistral” originally meant “left” but took on meanings of “evil” or “unlucky” by the later Classical Latin era, and this meaning survives in the English word “sinister”. On the other hand (pun intended) the word for the direction “right” also means “correct” or even “proper” or “just”. History is written by the victors and language is shaped by the majority so left-handers have had to live with these sinister implications at the same time as having to endure painfully writing in spiral notepads, pushing rather than pulling a ballpoint pen, trying to find left-handed scissors, some tablets or kindles that you have to reach across to flip forward a page, desks in lecture halls with the tiny desk top on the right of the seat, and so the list goes in a world predominantly built for right-handers. If you are a right-hander and are now pausing for a moment to think and the difficulties lefties face, then your reverie may be made all the more poignant if you are in the Southern Hemisphere because as you read this a higher than normal number of left-handed men are being born.

The link between winter births and left-handedness in men was made by Austrian and German researchers who looked at left and right handedness in a group of 13,000 adults. They looked at when people were born and correlated that with their hand preference.

They found that in an average month 7.5 per cent of women are born left-handed and 8.8 per cent of men. The surprise finding though was that among men this figure jumped abruptly during the winter months. In the Northern Hemisphere winter months of November to January the number of left-handed male births rose to 10.5 per cent where for the months February to October it was 8.2 per cent.

So what is the link between the cold months and the birth of left-handed men?

The theory goes that testosterone plays a role in maturation of the left-hemisphere of the brain during embryonic development. The left-brain hemisphere is dominant among right handers and testosterone levels increase the more daylight you are exposed to. So increased daylight during the summer months when winter-born children are in the womb may play a role in the development of left-handedness.

There are other genetic and social theories as to why left and right-handedness develop but these researchers say their results suggest a link between hormones and brain development and therefore handedness. It is an interesting insight but the link to left-handed births in winter is cold comfort for left-handers searching for a decent pair of scissors.