Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, I've
Speaker 1: been through the desert on a horse with no name.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and Lauren Pokmon and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're gonna talk about the future of naming
Speaker 1: and just kind of names in general, and why names
Speaker 1: are important and why we put significance on them and
Speaker 1: do we put more significance on them than we actually realize? Uh?
Speaker 1: So to start off, let's just talk about the power
Speaker 1: of names. Now. This is something that pops up again
Speaker 1: and again in folklore, right, and we are all familiar
Speaker 1: with various fairy tales, like of course rumble Stiltskin being
Speaker 1: a big one, about how having someone's name gives you
Speaker 1: some form of influence or power over them, that names
Speaker 1: themselves are intrinsically powerful. This is an idea that goes
Speaker 1: back to prehistoric times. Really, oh sure? And uh and
Speaker 1: you know, in Jewish tradition, the idea that saying the
Speaker 1: name of God is it is a blasphemy because it
Speaker 1: holds so much power that it's dangerous, right if you
Speaker 1: go even into more modern UH concepts. So we've got
Speaker 1: like a love Craft's idea of hast the unspeakable one
Speaker 1: I've obviously just invited because I've actually said his name.
Speaker 1: Or if you go even more modern with J. K.
Speaker 1: Rowling and UH and Harry Potter, you have you shall
Speaker 1: not be named with us. To speak his name would
Speaker 1: be to invoke his power or beetlejuice. Yeah, the modern
Speaker 1: repels still skin right. You say his name three times
Speaker 1: to summon him, and then you can only put him
Speaker 1: back down by getting his name out three times again.
Speaker 1: Also the Dresden Files Jim Butcher books based highly on
Speaker 1: that kind of fame mythology exactly. But you know, if
Speaker 1: if you know the true name, then you can get
Speaker 1: power over them. But in that case, you not only
Speaker 1: have to know what the true name is, you have
Speaker 1: to be able to say it the right way. And
Speaker 1: someone's true name in that universe changes over time based
Speaker 1: upon the person's self perception. You know, how they feel
Speaker 1: about themselves. People have always perceived the power of naming
Speaker 1: is something that's really important in having mastery over something
Speaker 1: like even if if you look in the Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 1: in the Book of Genesis Genesis to nineteen, it says,
Speaker 1: out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast
Speaker 1: of the field and every bird of the sky, and
Speaker 1: brought them to the man to see what we he
Speaker 1: would call them. And whatever the man called the living creature,
Speaker 1: that was its name. And this is sort of like
Speaker 1: this symbolic like giving dominion to the earth, you know.
Speaker 1: So the interesting question to me is, I mean, clearly,
Speaker 1: in folklore we have ascribed a certain amount of power
Speaker 1: to this concept of names and what names are, and
Speaker 1: how that can can influence both the person named and
Speaker 1: the person who is naming that person, lots of persons
Speaker 1: in my world. But let's let's talk about in a
Speaker 1: in a less sort of folklore approach, or or even
Speaker 1: a philosophical approach. Can there be real social effects to names? So,
Speaker 1: you mean, just like a scientifically measurable effect, right, a
Speaker 1: quantifiable effect perhaps, or at least you know, is there
Speaker 1: any uh indication that names have some sort of actual
Speaker 1: power beyond just what we hear in these stories? Well? Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean short answer, yes, podcast is over, Go home, everybody. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we could start with the most
Speaker 1: obvious thing, which is that names, obviously will often tell
Speaker 1: us something about who a person is, like the culture
Speaker 1: they come from, or what their parents were like both
Speaker 1: um connote and denote certain things about a person, you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps um, where their family is from from right or um,
Speaker 1: or what kind of socioeconomic status they come from, or
Speaker 1: what gender they are or what what race they come from,
Speaker 1: or even if their parents leaned conservative versus liberal, depending
Speaker 1: upon some studies. Uh yeah, there's and there's some some
Speaker 1: kind of scary research about this sort of thing. There
Speaker 1: was a study that Freakonomics did a really good podcast
Speaker 1: episode on and we'll see if we can link that
Speaker 1: on social and send you over to to our enemies,
Speaker 1: not that they're we love the freakonomics guys. Um that
Speaker 1: that found that. Okay, So so there are there are
Speaker 1: traditionally in America, traditionally white names and traditionally black names,
Speaker 1: and back before the Equal Rights movement, it was it
Speaker 1: was kind of a mishmash of of everything that what
Speaker 1: your name was was not so much of a racial signifier.
Speaker 1: But through the nineteen seventies that began changing, mostly due
Speaker 1: to the Black Power movement and the way that that blacks,
Speaker 1: especially in racially racially isolated neighborhoods, were thinking about themselves
Speaker 1: and and so you know, it's it's it's a really
Speaker 1: hot button issue, but it's it's fascinating in a way
Speaker 1: because so so all of these studies have been done
Speaker 1: through the eighties and as recently as two thousand four
Speaker 1: that found that if identical resumes marked with black names
Speaker 1: or white names were sent to employers, the white names
Speaker 1: got more interview opportunities um. And in that one from
Speaker 1: two thousand four, white sounding names had to send ten
Speaker 1: resumes to get a call back, black sounding names fifteen resumes,
Speaker 1: and that number went down for white names on better resumes,
Speaker 1: like more developed resumes, but it didn't change that much
Speaker 1: for the black names with better resumes. Right, so, on
Speaker 1: the surface, that seems to suggest there's at least some
Speaker 1: level of institutionalized discrimination going on. Also that that gap
Speaker 1: didn't decrease for black names who gave addresses in better,
Speaker 1: more more affluent, or more um educated or wider neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: And it didn't even change in companies that used affirmative
Speaker 1: action UM. The only the only place that the gap
Speaker 1: did lesson was in certain Chicago neighborhoods that had higher
Speaker 1: black populations. Another thing I found interesting in that Freakonomics
Speaker 1: podcast that kind of relates to this, actually directly relates
Speaker 1: to this, was the the discovery that when a a
Speaker 1: a black scholar, was typing her name into Google, a
Speaker 1: an ad that popped up that was all about getting
Speaker 1: background information upon uh, the person whose name you type
Speaker 1: in pato and said do you want to see this
Speaker 1: person's arrest record? And she said, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a shocking revelation because she's never been arrested, and it
Speaker 1: was one of those experiences like, you know, you immediately
Speaker 1: get anxiety, You think, well, what how can this this
Speaker 1: incorrect information about me be out there on the internet.
Speaker 1: When it turns, it turns out it was a eight
Speaker 1: and add just for getting info about whomever you put
Speaker 1: in there. And it turns and if you were to
Speaker 1: put in other names, they discovered she discovered with a
Speaker 1: colleague of hers, when they would put in other names
Speaker 1: that were not uh, it didn't seem to come from
Speaker 1: a black culture, it would give you the same ad
Speaker 1: but different wording. So instead of saying a rest record,
Speaker 1: to be like, do you want to see so and
Speaker 1: so's background right, Uh yeah, she she works at Harvard
Speaker 1: and UM and they found that that arrest kind of
Speaker 1: language would come up of the time in UM strongly
Speaker 1: black suggestive names and only zero to six the time
Speaker 1: and white suggestive names. Yes. So the question there is
Speaker 1: where is this apparently discriminatory uh spin coming from? Like
Speaker 1: how is that coming into play? And according to Google,
Speaker 1: it was not their part. They said they had no
Speaker 1: no role in choosing what keywords would pull up one
Speaker 1: version of the ad versus another, and even according to
Speaker 1: the advertiser, they said that they had put nothing in place.
Speaker 1: But it may be that's just the behavior of users
Speaker 1: who click on one type of ad more frequently than
Speaker 1: the other, and as a result, the algorithms that figure
Speaker 1: out what is the most likely version of the ad
Speaker 1: to get clicks. Remember the the algorithm is just designed
Speaker 1: to try and get people to click on the ad. Uh.
Speaker 1: May have been that through behaviors of people who are
Speaker 1: actually using the service, that's why it's showing one version
Speaker 1: more than another, which means that it may not be
Speaker 1: a discriminatory thing on part of Google, which is the
Speaker 1: platform or the advertising agency which is providing the ad.
Speaker 1: But the actual users, So no matter who is at fault,
Speaker 1: it's a disturbing trend. Right. The positive thing that came
Speaker 1: out of and and the study that freakonomics was talking
Speaker 1: about specifically was a working study published in two thousand
Speaker 1: three by the National Bureau of Economic Research UM. It
Speaker 1: found that having a distinctly black name did not have
Speaker 1: a negative impact on life outcomes. Um, which is you know,
Speaker 1: the a portion of this very sad and scary kind
Speaker 1: of topic. Yeah, the findings seemed to be that UM.
Speaker 1: Strangely enough, there are short term acute, measurable effects, but
Speaker 1: the long term effects don't show up for some reason.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to determine a person's destiny in the
Speaker 1: long haul, right right. Their idea was that once a
Speaker 1: person is known to you, you the what what your
Speaker 1: name is become significantly less important because you're going to
Speaker 1: start judging them based on, you know, what you see
Speaker 1: right in front of you and how they act, rather
Speaker 1: than what their name is. So this might make a
Speaker 1: big difference, say in getting callbacks initially on just a
Speaker 1: resume and nothing else, but once you have an interview
Speaker 1: or something, it might not make much of a difference
Speaker 1: at all. Well, and beyond that, the they go so
Speaker 1: far in the Freakonomics podcast to actually mention that, you know,
Speaker 1: let's be realistic, how many jobs are filled simply through
Speaker 1: the resume process as opposed to networking. Networking is is huge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of those things where networking might
Speaker 1: even things out. And they even said that the name
Speaker 1: may not be so important if you're if you are applying.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're a black person applying to a job
Speaker 1: where the hiring manager does have some sort of of
Speaker 1: race ist attitudes, and if they had received a resume
Speaker 1: with a black name that something a name that comes
Speaker 1: across as from a black culture, they would have just
Speaker 1: put it aside. But let's say you're a black person
Speaker 1: who has a name that is not now indicative of
Speaker 1: black culture and maybe a name that many people might
Speaker 1: associate with white culture. You get called into an interview.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't get that job any so it turns you away,
Speaker 1: which you know, still shows that there's a an incredibly
Speaker 1: unfair bias there. But the point being that the name
Speaker 1: itself in that case is not is not the problem.
Speaker 1: The problem is the fact that the hiring manager was
Speaker 1: a racist. Yeah, I'm wondering these days if the greater
Speaker 1: influence of computer algorithms on choosing resumes to filter through
Speaker 1: in the first place might start erasing a little bit
Speaker 1: of that, one would hope. One would hope that it
Speaker 1: would be right well, as as it's looking for for
Speaker 1: really quantifiable things that are relevant to the job, you
Speaker 1: would hope that that would start to disappear, right, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so that's an uh an interesting and uh disturbing in
Speaker 1: the short term, but it seems better in the long term.
Speaker 1: A trend we can identify. But that's you can kind
Speaker 1: of see the root cause of that very easily. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just racial prejudice. You know, there are people who
Speaker 1: harbor really antisocial attitudes and that's being manifest in in
Speaker 1: certain hiring practices and stuff like that. But what about
Speaker 1: more subtle ways that names might affect the judgments we
Speaker 1: make about people. Yeah, you would think, all right, so
Speaker 1: we have lots of different cultures represent here on Earth
Speaker 1: among humankind, lots of different languages, lots of different ideals
Speaker 1: and ideologies. You would think that there there really aren't
Speaker 1: any like universal trends, are there? Well, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: just look within names that are associated with one culture. Okay, uh,
Speaker 1: let's assume that there's no prejudice at play or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, does it make a difference whether
Speaker 1: your name name is Steve or Harry. It depends on
Speaker 1: if someone's calling you or not. I guess it, would
Speaker 1: you know, make a difference. Then if your name is Stephen,
Speaker 1: they just keep calling you Harry, then you're never gonna
Speaker 1: do what they want you to do. I've got something
Speaker 1: interesting to pose it here or not positive, I didn't
Speaker 1: come up with this idea to present. Okay, I want
Speaker 1: you all to um, imagine two shapes. Okay, you need
Speaker 1: two shapes or do you have something? I'm going to
Speaker 1: describe them. The shape number one, it's a jagged star
Speaker 1: kind of shape, all right. Now imagine shape number two
Speaker 1: is a rounded, puffy cloud kind of shaped, alright. One
Speaker 1: of Now, these shapes have names in the language of
Speaker 1: an alien species, and those names are boo bah and
Speaker 1: ki ki. Alright, which shape is which? Just intuitively, I
Speaker 1: already know the answer to this, So I'm not going
Speaker 1: to la. Yeah, I've I've read the psychological study, so
Speaker 1: I I so I'm biased, But but I mean, but
Speaker 1: I genuinely would say that Kiki has to be the
Speaker 1: star shape and Bubba has to be the puffy shape.
Speaker 1: Of course, it just seems obvious. I mean it's at
Speaker 1: least the population. It seems obviously some of the general population.
Speaker 1: I think the numbers changed based on a few different demographics. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So this experiment was first done by a German psychologist
Speaker 1: named Wolfgang Kohler in nineteen twenty nine and published in
Speaker 1: his book Gestalt Psychology Salt, Yeah, and what he found.
Speaker 1: He used slightly different words but found basically the same things.
Speaker 1: Instead of Kiki saying takete, instead of Bubba saying baluba. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's STATICO kind of kind of constant thing going
Speaker 1: on for the sharp one and the round kind of
Speaker 1: words for sure. Um. And so found that there are
Speaker 1: these really strong associations between the sounds and the shapes.
Speaker 1: Totally nonsense word, totally abstract shapes. Why should this be
Speaker 1: um vs. Ramaschandre and Edward Hubbard repeated a similar basically
Speaker 1: did the same experiment again, I think it was in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, and they they used kiki and buba
Speaker 1: and that they found that among two groups of subjects
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, from different language groups. So one was a
Speaker 1: group of English speaking college students and one was a
Speaker 1: group of Tamil speakers from India, and they found among
Speaker 1: both groups of subjects identified this the shapes the same way.
Speaker 1: The rounded one was Buba and the jagged one was Kiki.
Speaker 1: Which this this is phenomenal when you sit there and
Speaker 1: think about how different languages from different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, where they don't share a at least they
Speaker 1: don't share a common language unless there's some proto language
Speaker 1: that we could talk if Tamil comes from Indo European,
Speaker 1: lots of languages have really really long ago ancestr But
Speaker 1: but you know, considering that like that, like automantapia for
Speaker 1: different animals can be so different. But yet when you
Speaker 1: hear it, you sort of go, like, no, Jon, that's
Speaker 1: absolutely the sound that a cat makes. Okay, that makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. That kel says chazoo. Where's the kel Eastern
Speaker 1: Europe apparently? Uh? But no, no, like like, like my
Speaker 1: example was going to be more about you know, Asian languages,
Speaker 1: where you have intonation, you have a tonality too words
Speaker 1: that is, and that's totally different from things that we'd
Speaker 1: find in a lot of Western languages where you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about a rising tone or a falling
Speaker 1: tone to a word. If I say a word, whether
Speaker 1: I'm doing a rising tone or lowering, the tone doesn't
Speaker 1: change the meaning of the word. It might make it
Speaker 1: sound like I'm asking a question, but I'm not changing
Speaker 1: the meaning of the word, whereas in some Asian languages
Speaker 1: that's actually the case, where it's not just the pronunciation
Speaker 1: but how the inflection is there, and that the whether
Speaker 1: or not there's a specific kind of tone. To me,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that despite those the sort of very basic
Speaker 1: differences in the language, you can still find this commonality. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So there are lots of different theories about what might
Speaker 1: explain this association. Some say that, uh, well, some focus
Speaker 1: on or is it the consonants in the words or
Speaker 1: the vowels in the words that cause this, So you
Speaker 1: can switch them around and try to mess with that
Speaker 1: and see if it changes the result. Um. Some would say,
Speaker 1: well is it um? Is it based on the shape
Speaker 1: your mouth is making when you say the word, or
Speaker 1: something more intrinsic about how the word sounds to you. Um.
Speaker 1: All very interesting, but the important takeaway is that words
Speaker 1: aren't neutral. I mean, isn't that strange? Just consonants that
Speaker 1: have no predefined meaning still suggest things to the mind
Speaker 1: in this kind of what's been called like a synesthesia,
Speaker 1: like mapping. Interesting. So so even when we don't have
Speaker 1: kind of ations like you know, not that many babies
Speaker 1: are named Adolph anymore for very very good reasons, or
Speaker 1: or Damien, you know, after Rosemary's baby was kind of unpopular.
Speaker 1: That would be an association based on history, right exactly.
Speaker 1: But these are completely freeform associations, right, So it might
Speaker 1: be that a baby named Adolph, even if there'd never
Speaker 1: been a bad person named Adolph, there might be a
Speaker 1: situation in which, for one reason or another, Adolph sounds
Speaker 1: like a positive name to people, or maybe sounds like
Speaker 1: a negative one. Yeah, that actually brings me up to
Speaker 1: h I was going to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: scholarship done on various various concepts around naming, some of
Speaker 1: which some of which seems a little vague to me,
Speaker 1: but it's probably because I haven't been able to read
Speaker 1: the whole paper. In a couple of cases, I did
Speaker 1: get the whole paper for many of these, but one specifically,
Speaker 1: the first one I wanted to talk about is name
Speaker 1: valence and physical attractiveness in Facebook their compensatory effects on
Speaker 1: friendship acceptance. So this one I read the abstract, but
Speaker 1: I didn't have access to the full article before we
Speaker 1: could go into you recording. And the reason why I
Speaker 1: call this one a little vague is here's the abstract,
Speaker 1: um or at least here's here's what I wrote about
Speaker 1: the abstract. They talked about two factors that can influence
Speaker 1: whether or not you accept someone's friend request on Facebook. Now,
Speaker 1: this is, I guess, assuming that you do not already
Speaker 1: know the person. So it's not like some old friend
Speaker 1: contacting you. It's someone out of the blue contacting you
Speaker 1: on Facebook to be your friend. And that's that's the
Speaker 1: definition of your friendship with them. It's a Facebook friend.
Speaker 1: He said. The two factors that they were looking at
Speaker 1: were attractiveness of the person's photo and the whether or
Speaker 1: not their name sounded quote positive or quote negative. I
Speaker 1: don't know what positive and negative means, but it's not
Speaker 1: defined within the abstract. So without those definitions, I cannot
Speaker 1: really say what they're talking about. I mean, were they
Speaker 1: going with names that are culturally pleasing in the sense
Speaker 1: that they're very popular at a certain time, or that
Speaker 1: they are unique names, or that they just sound like
Speaker 1: I don't know whether criteria are for positive versus negative,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what positive and negative necessarily mean
Speaker 1: in the context of this study. However, according to the abstract,
Speaker 1: what happened was they found that, uh, the more attractive
Speaker 1: a a picture was, the more likely someone would accept
Speaker 1: a friend request. The more positive the name, the more
Speaker 1: likely someone to accept our friend request, and that if
Speaker 1: the name sounded more positive, it could balance out a
Speaker 1: picture that was deemed less attractive. To me, this is
Speaker 1: kind of tricky because attractive and positive are both very
Speaker 1: subjective terms, so I'm not really sure, Like, did they
Speaker 1: show this to a robot and the robot gave a
Speaker 1: thumbs up for attractive and a thumbs down form I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that they explained to their methodology. I'm sure,
Speaker 1: And I just wasn't able to read all of it.
Speaker 1: But when I was able to read, was the name
Speaker 1: pronunciation effect why people like Mr Smith more than Mr Cahun? Right?
Speaker 1: I I I think I heard about that one Calhoun.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's spelled c O l q U
Speaker 1: H U O N. And the whole idea is that
Speaker 1: people who have names that are more easily pronounced tend
Speaker 1: to have a better time of it. It looks like
Speaker 1: according to the study, they looked at law firms, and
Speaker 1: I looked at where people fell in the hierarchy of
Speaker 1: their law firms, and the study said that the people
Speaker 1: who had more easily pronounceable names rose higher in their
Speaker 1: law firms than people who had more difficult to pronounce names.
Speaker 1: Now this whole pronounce easy to pronounce versus difficult to pronounce.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter how long the name was. It didn't
Speaker 1: matter if the name was was familiar or foreign sounding.
Speaker 1: It just mattered whether or not it was easy to pronounce.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean that someone
Speaker 1: who has a last name that wouldn't normally be found
Speaker 1: in that region would not rise very quickly compared to others.
Speaker 1: It just had to be easy to pronounce. If it
Speaker 1: was hard to pronounce, they didn't rise as quickly according
Speaker 1: to this study, h which I thought was kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: There was another one called it a study in Germany,
Speaker 1: which makes sense when you hear the title, It pays
Speaker 1: to be Eric Kaiser Uh and this one. They found
Speaker 1: that people who had noble sounding last names tended to
Speaker 1: have higher UH positions of authority, even if the last
Speaker 1: name had no actual connection to any nobility whatsoever. So
Speaker 1: if you had a last name like Kaiser, then that
Speaker 1: would mean that, you know, you had the potential to
Speaker 1: rise more quickly than people who might have a last
Speaker 1: name like Becker, for you know, a more common the
Speaker 1: equivalent of like if someone named Vanderbilt versus Clampett came
Speaker 1: into your office looking for a job. I suppose It's
Speaker 1: it's hard to say, because if you're talking about noble
Speaker 1: sounding here in the US, you might have a someone
Speaker 1: with the last name of prince or king, and I
Speaker 1: don't know that that would necessarily work. If they had
Speaker 1: a last name of president, who knows, but no, if
Speaker 1: they had a last name like that was perhaps a
Speaker 1: presidential last name, that might be more akin. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say, because you know, Vanderbilts definitely do have a
Speaker 1: certain connotation. You know Carnegie would as well. That's sort
Speaker 1: of thing. These these big names in UH in in
Speaker 1: American history and specifically in financial history in America. UH.
Speaker 1: And the last one I looked at was do names matter.
Speaker 1: The influence of names on perception about professionals in Spain. Now,
Speaker 1: this one was interesting because it actually found that there
Speaker 1: did not seem to be a strong correlation between people's
Speaker 1: perceptions of a person's ability to do his or her
Speaker 1: job and that person's name. So if you had a
Speaker 1: name that was difficult to pronounce, or a name that
Speaker 1: was by just by the fact the way your name is,
Speaker 1: if it sounds like kind of a pun or almost
Speaker 1: like a joke, just based on the name, it didn't
Speaker 1: mean that they felt that you couldn't do your job
Speaker 1: better or worse than anyone else. It had no no effect,
Speaker 1: significant effect whatsoever, meaning that at least in this study,
Speaker 1: the social effective names was minimal. Now, of course we
Speaker 1: should say that all of these, you know, looking at
Speaker 1: different studies from around the world, slightly different issues, and
Speaker 1: they're all from different cultures, so there could be some
Speaker 1: cultural elements at play here, not just you know, you
Speaker 1: can't we can't get so objective as to say this
Speaker 1: is true for the human condition hands down, doesn't matter what,
Speaker 1: and it's all tied into really complex you know, not
Speaker 1: only racial or economic or social issues, but a little
Speaker 1: bit of all of that and extending to gender as well.
Speaker 1: Um uh. An interesting paper I saw out of the
Speaker 1: National Bureau of Economic Research as well said that, um,
Speaker 1: that whole boy named Sue story is pretty accurate. It
Speaker 1: found that boys with female sounding names tended to misbehave
Speaker 1: just proportionately upon entry to middle school compared with other
Speaker 1: boys their age, and also their own previous behavioral patterns.
Speaker 1: And you're you know, like speaking more colloquially. I don't
Speaker 1: have specific numbers on this, but um, but you know,
Speaker 1: in the publishing industry, there's this perception that people will
Speaker 1: read that more people a k A. More men will
Speaker 1: read more books written by men than they will buy women.
Speaker 1: And therefore you get you know, the publisher telling j. K.
Speaker 1: Rowling to use j K instead of Joanne when she
Speaker 1: published Harry Potter because they were afraid that little boys
Speaker 1: wouldn't pick up a book about a magic dude written
Speaker 1: by a woman. These little boys don't deserve when it
Speaker 1: gets to the publishing industry, there's all sorts of weird
Speaker 1: and wacky rules I could talk about. You know, my
Speaker 1: dad's an author and he's written under I think at
Speaker 1: least two pseudonyms besides his own. He's written under his
Speaker 1: own name as well. And uh, and I think in
Speaker 1: at least one of those choices was mandated by his publisher,
Speaker 1: so the other one may have been his choice. I can't.
Speaker 1: I'll have to talk to him and ask him. I've
Speaker 1: never asked him why his his mystery series is written
Speaker 1: under a pseudonym. But yeah, it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: crazy because the publishing industry, like they have people who,
Speaker 1: you know, they they're looking into to any way to
Speaker 1: boost the numbers of sales. And and one of those
Speaker 1: things is saying like, well, if you're known for writing
Speaker 1: this kind of book, or you happen to be of
Speaker 1: this gender, then this other book buying population is never
Speaker 1: going to touch your stuff. So we have right when
Speaker 1: when Nora Roberts changed her name to J. D. Rob
Speaker 1: to write sci fi action thrillers instead of the normal
Speaker 1: romance novels that she writes. All right, So, looking at
Speaker 1: all these different studies, there's some that do suggest that
Speaker 1: names have at least some social impact. There are others
Speaker 1: that say it's not that significant, and it looks like
Speaker 1: in the long run, names may have an impact on
Speaker 1: that initial reaction, but not necessarily a prolonged impact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one idea I want to float is the possibility that
Speaker 1: the effect of naming could become more pronounced in the future,
Speaker 1: starting in the present. Um, because what are we talking about. Well,
Speaker 1: the good thing we found out about to say the
Speaker 1: racial prejudice naming effect was that it didn't seem to
Speaker 1: play out in the long term, that it was more
Speaker 1: an acute kind of problem. Um. But the long term,
Speaker 1: the waste people have come up with explaining that was
Speaker 1: about getting to know people and meeting them in person
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and and that would counteract some
Speaker 1: of the negative effects. Um. But I wonder how that
Speaker 1: might change in an online economy. So in that world
Speaker 1: we get back to that study where you know, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: since I didn't have the full thing, I couldn't address
Speaker 1: how specific it gets. But if you're talking about a
Speaker 1: world where your most of your interactions are through online channels,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, social networking or otherwise, then things
Speaker 1: like an attractive photo and a a positive name could
Speaker 1: get you further than the alternative. Right. So if that's true,
Speaker 1: then we could kind of jump jump into a conclusion
Speaker 1: is the wrong way of putting it, but we could
Speaker 1: we could draw a conclusion we can at least propose
Speaker 1: a hypothesis that a a good name could get you
Speaker 1: further uh in a an increasingly online world, that that
Speaker 1: would be uh one of those assets that you could
Speaker 1: use to get ahead, and that furthermore, your your given
Speaker 1: birth name would matter less in that kind of situation
Speaker 1: because you could give really any name that you wanted
Speaker 1: to on the internet. I mean, also, changing your name
Speaker 1: in the United States anyway, is a pretty easy legal proposition.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's relatively inexpensive, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not something that requires a huge amount of legwork. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean there is some because there's paperwork you have
Speaker 1: to do in order to have your your records reflect
Speaker 1: your new name. You can't can't just just jump off
Speaker 1: the grid and uh and create a new identity for yourself,
Speaker 1: despite what numerous movies will tell you. Sure, although I
Speaker 1: think that that's getting into a section that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a little bit later. I think right now,
Speaker 1: we were wanting to talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: how we name um inanimate objects. Yeah, so, do you
Speaker 1: guys own anything like own any electronics or or equipment
Speaker 1: or anything that you've given a name to. My wife
Speaker 1: had a van named Gladys. Okay, Gladys or Gladows. The
Speaker 1: van is not a lie. Yeah, it's my my car.
Speaker 1: My car has a name. It's a Billy the don
Speaker 1: Treader Billy. Then, Lauren, you said you've you've named most
Speaker 1: of your views. I've named all of my cars. Yes,
Speaker 1: and what's happened to all of them? Besides Billy the
Speaker 1: don Tredder. They've gotten totaled. So Lauren has a complicated
Speaker 1: two of them due to my own fault looks it
Speaker 1: was a number of years ago and my insurance rates
Speaker 1: are dropping. So wait, wait, only two of them, you're
Speaker 1: I'm not going to ask how many. That's that's between
Speaker 1: that's between you and you. But no, it's It's funny
Speaker 1: because one of the reasons why we wanted to bring
Speaker 1: this up is this idea of naming something creates a
Speaker 1: different kind of connection. It's not just this is this
Speaker 1: thing I own you. You're giving it kind of an identity.
Speaker 1: You know, you really are giving it an identity, which
Speaker 1: means that you might have you could, at least in
Speaker 1: my mind, develop an emotional attachment to this possession beyond
Speaker 1: what just saying like this is mine. It may be
Speaker 1: that you feel for this thing. Absolutely. I mean names
Speaker 1: are a human trait and and anthropomorphism is ascribing non
Speaker 1: human things with human traits. So when we name anything
Speaker 1: from you know, from our pets, to our lamps, to
Speaker 1: our cars, etcetera, toasters, room bas um, you you're you're
Speaker 1: you're describing them as being worthy of care and consideration.
Speaker 1: Of course, the funny thing is almost nobody names their
Speaker 1: toasters or their lamps, but I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people name their room bas well. I think that anything
Speaker 1: that that has that motion element, like like if it
Speaker 1: seems to be acting under its own appears to be animate, right,
Speaker 1: because I mean toasters do move. I mean a couple
Speaker 1: parts of them will move. But the documentary Ghostbusters too,
Speaker 1: they move along. But I can see naming that toast. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some there's a study, and I don't have it in
Speaker 1: front of me that that a certain number of of
Speaker 1: crazy Roomba fans had actually named It was like around
Speaker 1: two thirds. That's a pretty high number of a relatively
Speaker 1: small sample size, right, Yeah, it was a small sample
Speaker 1: that was among thirty committed room by users, twenty one
Speaker 1: of them gave their robots names. So that small sample,
Speaker 1: but two thirds of them. And I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say in our experience, like most people who have
Speaker 1: room bas for some reason or another, name them. A
Speaker 1: lot of them ascribe, they give them gender to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this there's this chapter that I that I read
Speaker 1: from a book called Make It So Interaction Design Lessons
Speaker 1: from Science Fiction that was talking about how, um, people
Speaker 1: give computers human motivations, ages, genders, and and interact with
Speaker 1: them through human social keys, um, you know, with with
Speaker 1: persuasion and flattery, which sounds crazy when you're not talking
Speaker 1: to how nine thousand, but it's something that we all
Speaker 1: do every day. I mean, how how often have you
Speaker 1: yelled at your computer and in a fit of rage
Speaker 1: that it just won't load a page or something like that?
Speaker 1: It is frequently as I yell at Josh Clark, so
Speaker 1: you know too, three times a day? Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: like like think about think about Clippy? Okay, people see right,
Speaker 1: this was a program, This was a computer program. But
Speaker 1: because it was anthropomorphized and and it acted without social graces,
Speaker 1: people get annoyed by that. It's if if if Clippy
Speaker 1: had not had eyes, would we have that reaction to Clippy.
Speaker 1: I want to straighten clipp Let's let's also let's also
Speaker 1: take a moment here to mention that we've got another
Speaker 1: There's another podcast that that Lauren and I do called
Speaker 1: Text Stuff, and we did a full episode on Microsoft
Speaker 1: Bob which followed the same sort of design approach that
Speaker 1: ultimately spawned Clippy. So if you've ever wondered what an
Speaker 1: entire operating system would look like using the anthropomorphized Clippy approach,
Speaker 1: it was, yeah, listen to our episode on Microsoft Bob,
Speaker 1: because we had a lot to say about that. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: here's a a question I want to ask about this
Speaker 1: idea of more anthropomorphic technology in the home. If we've
Speaker 1: got smarter things, we've got more autonomously moving things, and
Speaker 1: we're giving these things names more often, is it going
Speaker 1: to be harder to get rid of them? I imagine? So,
Speaker 1: I apart from costs, I can I can imagine. I
Speaker 1: can imagine. Let's all right, So, you know how if
Speaker 1: you buy a a laptop computer. After a couple of years,
Speaker 1: it may end up being the case where your laptop
Speaker 1: is not performing, maybe the hard drived eyes and you
Speaker 1: find out that that repairing your laptop would cost as much,
Speaker 1: if not more, than buying a brand new laptop. Then
Speaker 1: in that case, you might think, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just try and retrieve as much information off this old
Speaker 1: laptop as possible and just buy a new one. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about let's look into the future where we
Speaker 1: have more sort of robotic assistant type things, and we
Speaker 1: have started this. This concept of naming, I think would
Speaker 1: just continue to be on the rise. I think we
Speaker 1: would see more and more people naming these sort of
Speaker 1: robotic assistance whatever they might be, whether it's a vacuum
Speaker 1: cleaner or something much more sophisticated. I can easily imagine
Speaker 1: that if you have developed this kind of emotional attachment
Speaker 1: to something, that even if you were to find out
Speaker 1: that repairing it would be more expensive than buying a
Speaker 1: new one, it would be a lot harder to just
Speaker 1: kind of abandon this thing that you've developed this emotional
Speaker 1: attachment to to get a brand new thing. It's almost
Speaker 1: like saying, well, you know, my dog, he's no longer
Speaker 1: a puppy. He doesn't run around and chase the ball
Speaker 1: as much as he used to, so I'm just going
Speaker 1: to get rid of him and get a puppy. This
Speaker 1: one's broken, I'm going to get a new one. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are people out there who feel that way,
Speaker 1: but I can't identify with that at all, because I've
Speaker 1: got a sixteen year old dog that I still treat
Speaker 1: like a puppy. And it's partially that concept of I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like once you give something like R two
Speaker 1: d too a nickname, I mean you you don't call
Speaker 1: him R two D two. You call him R two
Speaker 1: and it's spelled A R E A R ticed. The
Speaker 1: fans who love are two. It's it's a word. It's
Speaker 1: not the it's not the letters yeah or um or
Speaker 1: or Johnny number five from from Short Circuit, which is
Speaker 1: I'm possibly a terrible example because that's a really ridiculous film.
Speaker 1: But um but but you know, once, once he gave
Speaker 1: himself a name Johnny, it was like, Nope, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a dude. That's a thing right there. We can't
Speaker 1: can't get at him well, and so we're humanizing other objects.
Speaker 1: There's also this other concept in science fiction, the de
Speaker 1: humanization by removing names. Oh that's that's what says in
Speaker 1: my outline right here dys Topian Literature and Film excellent. Yes, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a thing we just all realize is
Speaker 1: going to happen, right when the future is taken over
Speaker 1: by these like nightmarish I see techno Stalin's or like
Speaker 1: I don't want you to have a personality, or or
Speaker 1: just corporations. Yeah, they'll say, look, you are not Jonathan.
Speaker 1: You're five K nine one or yes, or or or
Speaker 1: you know something like in the video game hit Man
Speaker 1: where the character has a barcode tattooed on the back
Speaker 1: of his name. Is this ever really going to happen?
Speaker 1: I think that. I think that calling Jonathan, I mean
Speaker 1: just having to yell across the office like like five
Speaker 1: K nine what four to uh you turn those notes
Speaker 1: into me? I mean, that's that's a huge that's you
Speaker 1: know what kind of reaction that would get, Well, it
Speaker 1: would be a very rude one uh. Or As another example,
Speaker 1: this is not just a science fiction thing, and this
Speaker 1: is not a new concept. Uh. If you are familiar
Speaker 1: with the the novel Lama, the character Jean Valjean is
Speaker 1: given a number in prison two six oh one, which
Speaker 1: becomes very important. That's how he's identified by the antagonist
Speaker 1: javert he he doesn't call him by name. Most times
Speaker 1: he calls him by that number. It's a dehumanization or
Speaker 1: or an a very tragic example, um, the people who
Speaker 1: were placed in the internment camps and in Nazi Germany
Speaker 1: during the Holocaust, where we're given numbers that they were
Speaker 1: referred to instead of names. Yeah, there are actually countries
Speaker 1: today that regulate naming. Now it's certainly uh, not as
Speaker 1: as awful as that, um, But for example, uh, in Iceland. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's say you want to name your child, Well, you
Speaker 1: can't name it just anything you want. In fact, there
Speaker 1: are government guidelines and the government has to approve the
Speaker 1: name you give your child. Just for example. There there's
Speaker 1: some countries uh, and Iceland is one of them where
Speaker 1: apparently the name of your child is supposed to reflect
Speaker 1: the child's gender. Huh. Yeah, so uh, you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to give a boy name to a girl, and you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to give a girl name to a boy.
Speaker 1: That seems kind of archaic. Yeah, I don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's probably some kind of reasoning behind this, but it
Speaker 1: may be something from the olden days. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting because there are some names that have changed over
Speaker 1: time where it was identified as either a masculine name
Speaker 1: at one time and then changed to a feminine name
Speaker 1: at another time, or or are women these days who
Speaker 1: go by the names Sam or Chris or something that
Speaker 1: was traditionally. If you think of a person whose first
Speaker 1: name is Blair, what what sex do you think that
Speaker 1: person is? I usually think female. Yeah, well, it turns
Speaker 1: out in Iceland that's supposed to be a boy's name.
Speaker 1: But there is a girl who was born fifteen years
Speaker 1: ago um to a mother named bjork Id's daughter and
Speaker 1: she this girl was named Blair, and so she's grown
Speaker 1: up with the name Blair. But apparently she uh just
Speaker 1: recently had to fight a court battle in Iceland to
Speaker 1: get her name recognized by the state. Like on her
Speaker 1: passport it just had this placeholder name that said girl
Speaker 1: because the state would not risk accept Blair as a
Speaker 1: girl's name. It's supposed to be a boy's name. Well,
Speaker 1: finally that she won her court case and and got
Speaker 1: her name recognized. There's a case of a German boy
Speaker 1: being named Maddie and that was a name that was
Speaker 1: turned to m A T. T I that was turned
Speaker 1: down because the sex of the baby. Um was not
Speaker 1: obvious from that name. That's wild. This is the twenty
Speaker 1: one century. I guess that was the twentieth century, but
Speaker 1: laid on in it. Yes, Um, so in in lots
Speaker 1: of countries. Also, they're not just restrictions on, say, like
Speaker 1: the gender alignment of a name, but there are restrictions
Speaker 1: basically on on matters of taste, like baby's named Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler and Osama bin Laden have been outlawed in Germany.
Speaker 1: Um well though, I mean, I guess then again, you
Speaker 1: can see why you wouldn't want kids to have those names. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but outlawing it seems a little bit extreme. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's the kind of I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's something the government doesn't necessarily need
Speaker 1: to have a say in. Like if if those parents
Speaker 1: can't culturally for themselves decide that that baby should not
Speaker 1: be named that thing, then yeah, on one hand, you
Speaker 1: could say, well, this is to protect the child who
Speaker 1: has no choice in his or her name, and yet
Speaker 1: we'll have to deal with the consequences of having that
Speaker 1: name up until the point at which they can legally
Speaker 1: change it themselves. So I mean it's yeah, I definitely.
Speaker 1: I definitely can see both sides of it. I agree
Speaker 1: more with you, Lauren then with with them, with the
Speaker 1: government's approach in this case. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I can at least see some sense in it, just
Speaker 1: just going like that's child abuse. Make it stop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind I mean, I mean, and I don't know. It's strange,
Speaker 1: Like I like having the name Lauren Um, which also
Speaker 1: spelled differently, usually can can be a boy's name. I
Speaker 1: have had a few people either send like junk male
Speaker 1: kind of stuff or call me going like hey, Mr Vogelbaum,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, nope, that's not a dude. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: let's let's let's wrap this up, guys, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit. Let's wrap this up, this discussion up with
Speaker 1: a little talk about naming in the scientific world. Well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you might say that there could be a scientific
Speaker 1: approach to human beings in which a serial number would
Speaker 1: be more efficient than having a name like Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. If you know from googling, Jonathan Strickland on
Speaker 1: this podcast is not the only Jonathan Strickland. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are lots of there's a young African American pilot. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are quite a few people in jail. Uh none
Speaker 1: of them are me. Um, there's a representative I think
Speaker 1: in Texas. I share a name with some kind of
Speaker 1: person who's big in like the Ohio Health Department or
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't know. I am, shockingly enough
Speaker 1: the only Lauren Vogel bomb on this planet. From what
Speaker 1: I can tell your special sniffla Vogel Bomb is is
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty rare not that many bared trees anyway.
Speaker 1: But so, but so for all of you who have
Speaker 1: slightly more common names, yeah, yeah, you know, I can.
Speaker 1: And this is why things like security numbers were were invented,
Speaker 1: because it's a lot easier to have this nine digit
Speaker 1: signifier than to go like Jonathan Strickland. Is that Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland one through a hundred? Like like which one? There
Speaker 1: was even another Jonathan Strickland in the college. I went
Speaker 1: to who who's definitely complicated? Just one change, one difference
Speaker 1: in our middle initials, and that was it. Uh. So
Speaker 1: there are lots of other things than people. We might
Speaker 1: want to apply the same kind of specificity to write
Speaker 1: social security number concept. What about um species of organisms? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, really, when we get here, the naming isn't
Speaker 1: so much a problem as is the taxonomy, which is
Speaker 1: the idea of not just not just naming something, but
Speaker 1: having figuring out where it fits within a larger context. Right.
Speaker 1: But um, I mean before we even got to the
Speaker 1: binomial nomenclature we used today. I mean, think about how
Speaker 1: confusing biology must have been before we had specific, unique
Speaker 1: names for every species. When it's like, the biology was
Speaker 1: pretty much called let's cut this thing open and see
Speaker 1: what the future is trying to study spiders, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we have a brown spider and another brown spider, and
Speaker 1: this is a black spider. And well, I think it
Speaker 1: was also pretty confusing because people had such a low
Speaker 1: grip on science in general compared to what we know today.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you know, Star trek Ara, people would
Speaker 1: say the same thing about us. But but the biological classification,
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea of classifying things so that you
Speaker 1: can have a meaningful scientific discussion about them dates back
Speaker 1: to the ancient Greeks. It's not something that's brand new. Well,
Speaker 1: they did think that bees were related to like maggots
Speaker 1: or something like that. At one point, there were there
Speaker 1: were a lot of mistakes were made, and we corrected
Speaker 1: them as time went on. So so generally speaking, if
Speaker 1: you're going with the classical nomenclature approach, you're looking at
Speaker 1: the seven main ranks in in biology Kingdom Islem class order, family, genus,
Speaker 1: and species. And genus and species tend to be what
Speaker 1: we refer what we use when we when we're talking
Speaker 1: about a specific animal, we use the genus and the
Speaker 1: species to identify that animal. Now, these these classifications were
Speaker 1: based upon morphology is based upon the the appearance and
Speaker 1: the apparent structure of these animals. So we grouped them
Speaker 1: together based upon that. But that was before we had genetics,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. Now we had genetics the whole time, we
Speaker 1: just didn't study it very much. The the but no, no,
Speaker 1: it was before we understood much about genetics. You're right,
Speaker 1: and and so uh the so so this this classic
Speaker 1: kind of morph morphological approach. You might have two critters
Speaker 1: that on the surface appear very similar, but in fact
Speaker 1: come from very different ancestors through convergent evolution or some
Speaker 1: other means, and so you may not have them grouped
Speaker 1: in the best way. If you want to talk about
Speaker 1: groups of animals that are actually related to one another.
Speaker 1: And that's what brings us to the phylogenetic nomenclature approach,
Speaker 1: which is where you're trying to group animals based upon
Speaker 1: that common ancestor. They're grouped into clades, is essentially what
Speaker 1: they're called. And in this clade, you you're you're looking
Speaker 1: at an ancestor that then created all these you know,
Speaker 1: the descendants. Branches are all the different branches. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: looking at kind of like a tree, and you could
Speaker 1: look at things like primates, and primates have lots of
Speaker 1: different little little branches that branch off of that. You've
Speaker 1: got Laura's Yeah, you've got monkeys, you've got apes, and
Speaker 1: then apes are their own clade. That's a subclade within
Speaker 1: the clade of primates, because apes include all the great
Speaker 1: apes as well as you know, the manned and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But if you were to say monkeys,
Speaker 1: that's not a claydon to itself, because there are different
Speaker 1: monkeys that have slightly different ancestors that are within the
Speaker 1: primate clade, but they themselves, the monkeys do not have
Speaker 1: their own distinct clade, you see. So because there you
Speaker 1: can find monkeys in different parts of the world that
Speaker 1: do not have a common ancestor until you get back
Speaker 1: to that primate ancestor. So the idea. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: useful in the sense of you can you can classify
Speaker 1: animals together in a way where you can have a
Speaker 1: meaningful discussion about how they're related to one another or
Speaker 1: not related to one another. But it doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that we actually change the way we name things, because
Speaker 1: it's more about the overall taxonomy as opposed to the
Speaker 1: individual species name. Right. We're not going to stop calling
Speaker 1: a dog a canine just right just because we find
Speaker 1: out it came from a lobster or something. Okay, so
Speaker 1: in that case perhaps, but they're just really cute lobsters
Speaker 1: want a lobster. There are other things that we have
Speaker 1: to talk about that we need, you know, specificity for
Speaker 1: like in chemistry, for example, chemicals are very important that
Speaker 1: we that were very specific. Obviously, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: chemical reactions, you have to be sure you're talking about
Speaker 1: the the exact chemicals involved, and if you happen to
Speaker 1: be using some general terms, you may not have the
Speaker 1: specific chemical you were thinking of, and the and the
Speaker 1: mixture will turn out wrong or possibly exclusive. Well, there
Speaker 1: are lots of familiar names for chemicals, but then there
Speaker 1: are also technical names. So so you have a scientific
Speaker 1: name that's basically a word that's put together by algorithm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the scientific name tends to reflect things like the chemical
Speaker 1: process that happened in order of that chemical to exist.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of different references within the name itself,
Speaker 1: which means that some of these names get pretty long. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And then you know today we've we've got the those
Speaker 1: those long chemical names versus the um proprietary names that
Speaker 1: people give to a drug, for example, it's going to
Speaker 1: go out. Well, there's the example I was going to
Speaker 1: give was the one that that Joe pulled up with
Speaker 1: as the largest known protein, which is Titan t I
Speaker 1: t I n named after Titan t I t A
Speaker 1: n uh. It's scientific name, which was designated by the
Speaker 1: International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is um too
Speaker 1: long for me to pronounce. I mean literally, it would
Speaker 1: take three hours for me to pronounce it. I am
Speaker 1: not kidding. It has nineteen letters in it. It's considered
Speaker 1: the longest word in the English language if you count
Speaker 1: it as a word, which not all people do. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a long word. There's no spaces in it.
Speaker 1: It's a word. If you're a lexicographer you might disagree,
Speaker 1: but anyway, So that's that's another example of where specificity
Speaker 1: is needed. And then there are the concept of naming stars.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's complicated as it turns out. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, So so there's common names that we
Speaker 1: all know stars by, perhaps um at least some stars.
Speaker 1: A small sample of the stars that exist in the
Speaker 1: very bright ones that are very obvious in your scular
Speaker 1: region of the world might have a common name. But
Speaker 1: Roximus centauri or something. Sure, well, well those those are
Speaker 1: actually named by the Bayer designation, which comes from about
Speaker 1: sixteen o three and is based on the brightness of
Speaker 1: a star within its given constellation. And and this is
Speaker 1: the Western concept of constellations, of course, I mean not
Speaker 1: of course, but but that's where that's happened. That's what happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's based on Greco Roman constellations, which is just
Speaker 1: so incredibly earth based that I'm sitting here trying to
Speaker 1: imagine future space travelers going like like where's the center
Speaker 1: and the sky really, guys, are we still using this?
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. But then even the designation for stars
Speaker 1: that we've we've discovered only through the use of powerful
Speaker 1: telescopes still have an Earth based designation because we're giving
Speaker 1: them coordinates, right sure, And you know, and all of
Speaker 1: the other designations that are that are out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we we've switched to a bunch of different
Speaker 1: ones over the years, and you know, some use numbers
Speaker 1: to designate brightness within a constellation. Some use um ascension
Speaker 1: in the sky like right ascension instead of brightness, and
Speaker 1: but it's all just it's all really just the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, if you lived on another planet, and
Speaker 1: let's say that we're going to go ahead a few
Speaker 1: thousand years and humans have colonized different areas of space,
Speaker 1: then if you're referring to the old naming system of stars,
Speaker 1: it may not be as meaningful to you, because what
Speaker 1: was the brightest star in a constellation on Earth? And
Speaker 1: let's say we've found some magical faster than light travel
Speaker 1: where we can go really really far into the universe,
Speaker 1: may not be the brightest star in that constant fact,
Speaker 1: there might not be even a constellation from your perspective,
Speaker 1: and you know, the way you look at it, you
Speaker 1: don't see that same sort of shape. So you would
Speaker 1: have to refer to the name either through an archaic
Speaker 1: and largely meaningless system, or we'd have to come up
Speaker 1: with a brand new way of naming stuff. It would
Speaker 1: be like still using hours and minutes after we leave
Speaker 1: the earth, or right, we might just have to do
Speaker 1: it for convenience sake. But guys, guys, guys, guys, guess solution.
Speaker 1: Because I saw this website, and on this website, for
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, you can name a star. So that's how
Speaker 1: we do it, right, We just pay the fifty bucks
Speaker 1: and we just start naming stars. Problem solved, right, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: As as we have talked about previously on the show,
Speaker 1: maybe you were absent that day, even though you were
Speaker 1: sitting here. Um, but you can you cannot. You cannot
Speaker 1: give a star. I mean you can give a star name,
Speaker 1: and that you can call up that company and have
Speaker 1: them put a line in their database next to that
Speaker 1: stars designation and say that that's the name that you
Speaker 1: have given it. But star's official names are given by
Speaker 1: the International Astronomical Union, and and you cannot call them
Speaker 1: and give them fifty dollars and name a star. And
Speaker 1: these other businesses you don't even know if they're really
Speaker 1: putting a name next to a database, not that it
Speaker 1: would matter if they did or didn't. They they're really
Speaker 1: just printing you a certrificate, UM, which which you can
Speaker 1: do yourself, and I recommend that you do that. If
Speaker 1: you really want to name a star. I'm launching the
Speaker 1: power point uh wizard right now. Or um, get yourself
Speaker 1: a really good telescope and start looking for new stars.
Speaker 1: Oh do you get to name a star if you
Speaker 1: discover it? Um? There there are rules there. There are
Speaker 1: really complicated rules. They I opened up a fact sheet
Speaker 1: on it and I was just like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to understand this this afternoon, so I'm just going
Speaker 1: to close this again. Um. But I don't have a
Speaker 1: telescope powerful enough to detect anything that hasn't already been detected.
Speaker 1: I think, Uh, there's always going to be a numerical designation,
Speaker 1: and the I you recommends several different methods of giving
Speaker 1: them that kind of designation. And there's usually also am
Speaker 1: a letter designation that's going to talk about what galaxy
Speaker 1: and or maybe what constellation it's in interesting well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the I think that kind of wraps up our whole
Speaker 1: discussion here, the whole idea about names having power. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there is something to it beyond just these these stories
Speaker 1: that we've heard in folklore infairance. Psychologically it's important, yeah uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, just practically it's important, obviously. I think
Speaker 1: it's if we didn't have names, I wouldn't know what
Speaker 1: to call these chuckle heads and across from me. So anyway,
Speaker 1: we want to invite all of our listeners as always
Speaker 1: to go and visit f W thinking dot com. That's
Speaker 1: the site where we've got all the links to our videos,
Speaker 1: are podcasts, are blog posts, we've got articles up there.
Speaker 1: We've got lots of information that you've got to check out.
Speaker 1: Make sure you go there, and remember, if you want
Speaker 1: to follow us online, you can find us at f
Speaker 1: W Thinking both on Facebook and on Twitter, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again in the future. For more on
Speaker 1: this topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking
Speaker 1: dot com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places