[mrkgnao]

It is a thing, and there's evidence for it in certain academic fields. [0] studies this effect in economics, and this would be reason to expect similar things in other fields like maths, CS, and physics where alphabetical surname order on research papers is standard. Modulo a lot of context, replicability issues, and the like (and of course career choices), there's a chance you actually are doing your daughter a tangible favour this way. :)

> Faculty with earlier surname initials are significantly more likely to receive tenure at top ten economics departments, are significantly more likely to become fellows of the Econometric Society, and, to a lesser extent, are more likely to receive the Clark Medal and the Nobel Prize.

> These statistically significant differences remain the same even after we control for country of origin, ethnicity, religion or departmental fixed effects. As a test, we replicate our analysis for faculty in the top 35 U.S. psychology departments, for which coauthorships are not normatively ordered alphabetically. We find no relationship between alphabetical placement and tenure status in psychology.

[0]: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/08953300677652608..., "What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success"