Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie
Speaker 1: Henry Doug Bliss. Really that's really your middle name. But
Speaker 1: if I could choose a guy's name, I think it
Speaker 1: would be Henry. Henry. Good solid name to me, Henry,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, it's kind of ordinary. But that's it's
Speaker 1: the thing about names. So often they're ordinary, and then
Speaker 1: what happens when they're a little different Henry James. And
Speaker 1: it's all about associations, right, That is good? That is good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are so many associations with names. There's family history.
Speaker 1: Names are both so simple and too simple and then
Speaker 1: just overly complicated the more you look at it. And
Speaker 1: could they possibly be so freighted with meaning that they
Speaker 1: come to actually form who we are? Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: The name that you're given is the name the secret
Speaker 1: ruler of your life? Did that determine everything in your
Speaker 1: life from the cradle to the grave, all because your
Speaker 1: your your mother and father decided to name you. Say
Speaker 1: say Sue, I was about to say. Johnt Cash had
Speaker 1: an idea about this long before researchers started to say
Speaker 1: what are the cognitive effects of naming children? Or rather,
Speaker 1: Shell Silverstein did, oh yeah, yeah, he wrote the lyrics
Speaker 1: to that song, or rather that was his poem that
Speaker 1: became the Johnny Cash song. I did not know that.
Speaker 1: That makes it even better, Shall I go for it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: My daughter left home one hours three and he didn't
Speaker 1: leave much to moll and me, just this old guitar
Speaker 1: and empty pol labooze. Now, I don't blame him close
Speaker 1: he running hit. But the meanest thing he ever did
Speaker 1: was before he left, he went and named miss Sue.
Speaker 1: And then, of course the song goes on and on
Speaker 1: to detail his life as a boy named Sue. It's
Speaker 1: a rough life, it's a hard life. But eventually he
Speaker 1: confronts his father. He says, yeah, he's pretty much like
Speaker 1: why did you do that? And his dad's like, well,
Speaker 1: I know it's a rough life, and I thought you
Speaker 1: had to be tough, so of course I named you
Speaker 1: sous that you'd have like a banackbone. And that's how
Speaker 1: much I love you, because I knew I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: be there. Yeah, he's saying, I essentially put a target
Speaker 1: on your head. Because I knew that either everyone around
Speaker 1: you would destroy you or and what did you know
Speaker 1: his Nieji says, what doesn't destroy me makes me stronger.
Speaker 1: So um, that was the whole, the whole idea here,
Speaker 1: that's what Shell Silverstein was going for a little Niegi. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I can't help. But I mean we've both been
Speaker 1: through the naming process for a child at this point.
Speaker 1: Did you have any names that you ended up rejecting? Um, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but obviously I liked them, they were on my list,
Speaker 1: you know. But um, but my grandmother used to to
Speaker 1: ask every day like what are you gonna name or
Speaker 1: what are you gonna name her? And I would just
Speaker 1: come up with ridiculous names to annoy her. Garlic sorbet
Speaker 1: toad stool ivory nice, a period person a person you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I had a short list of Sagan okay,
Speaker 1: that was a strong contender, a tray um Zevon, Shoehorn, Quantis,
Speaker 1: ny are leptap yasav Off. But they got just going
Speaker 1: with Sebastian instead, which is great. I love that name. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is just becomes a really important thing,
Speaker 1: that's naming of the child, and in fact it's so
Speaker 1: important that you know, people published tons of books about it,
Speaker 1: like name giving Advice, and there was even a two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten British study of three thousand parents that
Speaker 1: revealed that one in five parents regret the name that
Speaker 1: they chose for their child. So it would make sense
Speaker 1: that a parenting website like I don't know baby Center
Speaker 1: would be so um well visited by parents to see
Speaker 1: what are the most popular names for boys and girls.
Speaker 1: But also they put out information like what are the
Speaker 1: weirdest names? And in two thousand and thirteen they have
Speaker 1: some real hunting urs. Yeah. Um, there were at least
Speaker 1: three baby boys named Cheese yes, which which is nice. Um.
Speaker 1: I believe there was a character on the wire named Cheese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. I have to point out at this point
Speaker 1: there was also a child named Danish, and I was
Speaker 1: really hoping that, like, yeah, that they were twins like
Speaker 1: Cheese in Danish, but I don't think that was the case,
Speaker 1: Little Cheese. Uh. And then some of the other names Panda, yeah, Rocket,
Speaker 1: which is you know, you want an explosive child, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna get out there in the world. I have
Speaker 1: a rocket in my neighborhood. He's great. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: in doubt, you know, in terms of coming with a
Speaker 1: name for your child, just name them after a primordial
Speaker 1: sea monster that that that rise in the prehistoric darkness
Speaker 1: and h and rivals the might of an ancient Hebrew deity.
Speaker 1: I just name your kid Leviathan, which somebody did. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's no weight there, There's there's there's nothing there
Speaker 1: that would make that job feel sort of bogged down
Speaker 1: to the phil his or her destiny. Um, there's also
Speaker 1: Drago and bullet. So all of this kind of whirligig
Speaker 1: naming here made us wonder how does this play out
Speaker 1: in something called nominative determinism. Yeah, this is basically the
Speaker 1: idea that we're talking about here, except with science behind it.
Speaker 1: The idea that any name, yeah name, the name that
Speaker 1: we're given determines who we are, how we behave, and
Speaker 1: how the world's gonna treat us, how the world's gonna
Speaker 1: perceive us. That it really gets down into the complexity
Speaker 1: of language, right. We we end up acquiring language, building language,
Speaker 1: using languages, an operating system for the human brain, and
Speaker 1: the system that we based all of our culture on.
Speaker 1: And what I was really struck with in researching this topic.
Speaker 1: Is that UM is that nominative determinism is kind of
Speaker 1: it's almost like a mistake in the programming or a
Speaker 1: side effect of the programming that the name that you
Speaker 1: give an individual carries a lot of obvious weight. You know,
Speaker 1: if you name your your kid after a mythological hero,
Speaker 1: you're obviously drawing upon that you can call your kid
Speaker 1: thor is a certain thoroughness um that you're you're dragging
Speaker 1: in there. But then there's a lot of stuff that's
Speaker 1: happening at a subconscious level. It's just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: tendrils reaching out through the canvas of language, as do
Speaker 1: you mean, like the symbol wasn't necessarily meant to be internalized,
Speaker 1: but it's so easy for our brains to make that
Speaker 1: little walk over there. And we talked about this kind
Speaker 1: of in the last episode, about how if you have
Speaker 1: a limb that's next to your limb, and you begin
Speaker 1: to see it from your first person perspective, then you
Speaker 1: sort of adopt that limb as your own, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have three limbs. Um And we
Speaker 1: won't go into that, but the point is is that
Speaker 1: it's really easy to sort of take these things on
Speaker 1: as yourself, and that is at the heart of nominative determinism.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to read this little bit from a
Speaker 1: Mental Plus article on the topic. Quote Dr rich Dick
Speaker 1: chop Is in Austin, you're erologist. He was known for
Speaker 1: performing best ectomies. Really other doctors at the same urology
Speaker 1: clinic include Dr Hardeman and Dr Wang. Is this coincidence?
Speaker 1: Probably um, but there may be something there. That's that's
Speaker 1: why we're discussing it obviously. Well, in my experience, I
Speaker 1: am My father was a dentist, so I've always from
Speaker 1: a very little kid, I would always noticed the signs
Speaker 1: for dentist offices anywhere we went. And even then I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, there are a lot of dentists who have
Speaker 1: the last name Pain P A y. And even why, like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you want to change that? Do you really want
Speaker 1: to be Dr? Pain when people go to get their
Speaker 1: teeth worked on? And I did a quick Google search
Speaker 1: before we came to the podcast Camber and and just
Speaker 1: page after page of of of dentist named Pain, and
Speaker 1: it it makes you think again, are they are they
Speaker 1: drawn to dentistry somehow subconsciously because of that name or
Speaker 1: and then why maybe not change it if you're going
Speaker 1: to make a go out of business, because you wouldn't
Speaker 1: you wouldn't hesitate to change the name of the business
Speaker 1: off if the business name were somehow a counterpoint to
Speaker 1: what you're trying to the experience that you're trying to
Speaker 1: sell to the customer. So so it seems like you
Speaker 1: would you would want to do that with your your
Speaker 1: professional name as well. I don't know, I'm about to
Speaker 1: tell you something that I think might end up in
Speaker 1: an awkward silence moment. Uh my gas Row anthrologist. His
Speaker 1: name is doctor Sunshine, And I'm not kidding. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I think on that a moment, And then let's sort
Speaker 1: of switch gears here back to a boy named Sue,
Speaker 1: because apparently if you're a boy named Ashley or Shannon Um,
Speaker 1: there are some things that will be needed out to
Speaker 1: you because of having that name. In fact, research psychologist
Speaker 1: David Figlio of Northwestern University in Illinois looked at millions
Speaker 1: of birth certificates and then he broke them down by
Speaker 1: phonemics and behavior, and he found a bunch of different things,
Speaker 1: not just about Ashley and Shannon Um, but in terms
Speaker 1: of those names. He did to find that the boys
Speaker 1: with names traditionally given to girls are more likely to
Speaker 1: misbehave than their counterparts with masculine names, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because it lines up with the song. Right, boy named
Speaker 1: Sue winds up getting a lot of fights as an
Speaker 1: embattled life that makes him tougher. Uh, they found it
Speaker 1: up into a certain age. I think it was like
Speaker 1: age six. I think sixth grade. Sixth grade rather up.
Speaker 1: Unto a certain point, it didn't really make any difference.
Speaker 1: But then sixth grade hits and and so that's when
Speaker 1: the embattlement begins to really take hold. Suddenly, these these
Speaker 1: male individuals with feminine names are misbehaving and acting out
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, gender norms are in full force, right,
Speaker 1: and so you have kids who are are really trying
Speaker 1: to reinforce that idea and to make things worse. And
Speaker 1: I think this will be obvious if there happened to
Speaker 1: be a girl with the name of Shannon or Ashley
Speaker 1: in the same class as that boy, exactly, because there
Speaker 1: you have confirmation that you have a feminine because that
Speaker 1: kid is right there with it. Now. As a side note,
Speaker 1: I wondered to what extent this phenomenon might disappear as
Speaker 1: hopefully culture becomes increasingly sensitive to the the idea of
Speaker 1: gender and that gender is not an issue of one
Speaker 1: fortress and another fortress. Or does that even trickle down
Speaker 1: to kids or kids always going to be boys versus girls.
Speaker 1: I think it takes a while, because I try with
Speaker 1: my own daughter to try to live in a not
Speaker 1: a gender free world, but to not make that as
Speaker 1: as the starting point for for conversations or decisions. But
Speaker 1: I do see her teachers maybe unconsciously putting that dynamic
Speaker 1: in play and really talking a lot about boys and
Speaker 1: girls and the girls are lovely, and the boys are handsome,
Speaker 1: and the girls are well behaved, and that so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, and spice and everything nice exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and to that point, Um, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: point out that David Biglio found that girls with names
Speaker 1: that are relatively feminine in high school choose advanced coursework
Speaker 1: and humanities and less feminine names, Um they are given
Speaker 1: to girls, those girls are more likely to choose math
Speaker 1: and science courses. Interesting. So here's an idea, and one
Speaker 1: that I am really having trouble by, the idea that
Speaker 1: a name could not only determine how the society will
Speaker 1: view you and how your view your own place in society.
Speaker 1: But could a name actually make you more prone to
Speaker 1: disease or make you more unhealthy? Mm? I know you're
Speaker 1: talking about You're talking about the Brady Bunch study that
Speaker 1: they called the Brake I don't think they call it
Speaker 1: a pretty much study. But it was a study about
Speaker 1: people with a surname of Brady. This is in Doublin
Speaker 1: right researchers in Dublin. They wanted to discover whether or
Speaker 1: not a person's name might influence their health, and so
Speaker 1: they looked at whether people with his surname Brady had
Speaker 1: a higher incidence of Brady cardia that is a slow
Speaker 1: heart rate. How did they get funding for this? This
Speaker 1: just sounds in aimed to me, where someone and as
Speaker 1: we'll see, the research is really fat. I mean they
Speaker 1: find it's really fascinating. But who said I wonder if
Speaker 1: people with the name Brady are more likely to suffer
Speaker 1: from Brady Brady cardia. Like it's almost to propose that question,
Speaker 1: you have to feel like the answer might be yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also kind of wondered to what degree were people
Speaker 1: familiar with the term Brady cardia and knew about it
Speaker 1: and maybe internalized it because that's the idea, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was not familiar with the term, so it didn't
Speaker 1: play into my view of the Brady punch. YEA. Researchers
Speaker 1: used data from a hospital database and the percentage of
Speaker 1: the population of surname Brady, of course, and they determined
Speaker 1: through use of online telephone listenings in Dublin between two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven and two thousand and thirteen that they
Speaker 1: were something like five dred seventy nine Bradies listed in
Speaker 1: total and one thousand and twelve pacemakers fitted during this time,
Speaker 1: and the median age of the patients seventy seven years old,
Speaker 1: and the proportion of pacemaker recipients among Brady's one point
Speaker 1: three was significantly higher than among non Brady's point six one. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's something there. It's not huge. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: not saying, well, what a huge this. This completely says
Speaker 1: that this is going on, right. It's like a number
Speaker 1: of the things that we're talking about here, a number
Speaker 1: of the examples rather on an individual basis, you're just
Speaker 1: looking around at the people, you know it, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance it's not going to line up. But when
Speaker 1: you look at larger population groups and larger sample groups,
Speaker 1: that's where you begin to see these interesting statistics to uh,
Speaker 1: you know emerging. Yeah, and they did say in the study, hey,
Speaker 1: there are limitations to this. We don't know that the
Speaker 1: patient's background. We don't know if they were related and
Speaker 1: they had genetic predispositions, and this could have skewed results.
Speaker 1: We also don't know whether or not because this is
Speaker 1: a city center for um, this procedure that drew more
Speaker 1: bradyes and so that kind skew the results as well. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just kind of an interesting thing that's
Speaker 1: put out there. You know, you begin to wonder, should
Speaker 1: I name Mike, you know, just be on the safe side,
Speaker 1: I'll just go ahead and name my kid Methuselah or
Speaker 1: you know, just to ensure that they have a long life.
Speaker 1: But then, in my tempting fate, what happens when a
Speaker 1: kid named Methusela dies at age fifty? Then you're gonna
Speaker 1: feel really like I did that by giving him this
Speaker 1: name and trying to force the universe to make them
Speaker 1: live a really long time. I think it's okay. I
Speaker 1: think that sometimes kids will buck against their names. And um,
Speaker 1: this was actually in one of the articles that we read. Um,
Speaker 1: I'll have to look at it in a moment and
Speaker 1: bring up the title. But the article was saying that
Speaker 1: there was a father who named his kid loser lane
Speaker 1: and then purpose or was this one of those incidents
Speaker 1: where they thought it would be pronounced differently? Well you
Speaker 1: decided after tell you the next kid's name, Winner Lane. Okay,
Speaker 1: Loser ends up to be like an upstanding citizen. I
Speaker 1: don't think he's a cop or something, but I mean
Speaker 1: he's done well for himself. Winner turns out to be
Speaker 1: like in the Pokey all the time. His crime written
Speaker 1: What kind of father was this is? I'm just imagining
Speaker 1: it means it was like a B. F. Skinner type
Speaker 1: of ploy here. Well, did you hear about the sociologist
Speaker 1: who wrote Parentology. He named his children their first names,
Speaker 1: his daughter's e and then his other son or his
Speaker 1: son is yo, and then beyond like the first names,
Speaker 1: they have a million other names tacked onto it. And
Speaker 1: then they are not of Asian descent, But he decided
Speaker 1: to throw in some Asian names in there, just to
Speaker 1: kind of throw off the paradigm. He says of immigrants
Speaker 1: taking on um that country's name messed with the paradigm
Speaker 1: there um. Anyway, there was an interview with his kids,
Speaker 1: and his kids are like, yeah, we're fine with it,
Speaker 1: but yes, sometimes they're sociologists who unleash some experiments at home. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: of course there's well this is we'll discuss this some
Speaker 1: more as well. But of course any name you give
Speaker 1: somebody who does not exist in a vacuum, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of other factors at play. We're gonna take a break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, this will come directly into play.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back. We're going to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about fre Economics, because this is a book if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with it, that sort of takes this
Speaker 1: um socio economic view of things that we don't normally
Speaker 1: apply that sort of lens to and tries to figure
Speaker 1: out if there's some sort of algorithm that is driving
Speaker 1: our behavior and the things that we do. And of
Speaker 1: course naming came up in Fre Economics, um Steve Levitt,
Speaker 1: the author of Economics and Harvard Economics Roland G. Friar.
Speaker 1: They wanted to see if the trend of black parents
Speaker 1: naming their children distinctly non white names. They wanted to
Speaker 1: see if this had an impact on those kids later
Speaker 1: on socially and comically. Yeah. So what Friar did is
Speaker 1: he looked at birth certificate information for every child born
Speaker 1: in California since nineteen sixty one and uh and what
Speaker 1: he found uh initially matches up pretty well with with
Speaker 1: I think everyone's experience of names. Up until the early seventies,
Speaker 1: there was a more overlap in white black names. But
Speaker 1: then by nineteen eighty you see an explosion of distinctly
Speaker 1: black names. Uh. And some of the fuel for this,
Speaker 1: uh you can find in the Black power movement and
Speaker 1: the push to accentuate African culture and African roots and uh.
Speaker 1: And so you see this this divide. So suddenly you
Speaker 1: see more distinctly black names, increasing number of distinctly black
Speaker 1: names in the black community. So Friar found that the
Speaker 1: data showed that on average, person with a distinctly black
Speaker 1: name had a worse life outcome than an individual with
Speaker 1: a more common name. Now, it's important to note, and
Speaker 1: the authors of economic note that it's not the fault
Speaker 1: of their names. Okay, it has to do with the
Speaker 1: parents who select a particular sort of name. So again,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, names don't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: Names are coming from parents. And so you see trends
Speaker 1: where certain names are more likely to be bestowed by
Speaker 1: members of various levels of the socio economic scale. And
Speaker 1: and and this this is in the data that they discussing.
Speaker 1: Fre economics concerns more than just the white black divide,
Speaker 1: but also uh, the economic divide. What names are more
Speaker 1: common among lower income households versus higher income households. So
Speaker 1: we already know that there are unconscious associations. There's just
Speaker 1: all sorts of biases here. Yeah, not not to mean
Speaker 1: not to count out just overt bias and racism exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is really interesting. Um Latonia Russell, Harvard Professor
Speaker 1: of Government Technology. She published a study about search results
Speaker 1: in Google related to name searches and racial profiling in
Speaker 1: in the ad works for Good Well. And she did
Speaker 1: this after a search for her name served up an
Speaker 1: AD next to her name with find an arrest record
Speaker 1: and it was actually a colleague of hers um who
Speaker 1: was not black, who they were searching something about some
Speaker 1: of the work that they were doing and student in
Speaker 1: the search they were of course looking for their names
Speaker 1: to see how that would come up, and he was
Speaker 1: the first person to tag like, oh, that's weird. Mine
Speaker 1: doesn't come up with this arrest record ad over here,
Speaker 1: but yours does. And so he started to do a
Speaker 1: couple of different searches and came up with the idea
Speaker 1: of I think it's kind of tied to black sounding names,
Speaker 1: and she was appalled. She said, no, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm a scientist here. I'm going to conduct a formal
Speaker 1: um study of this, and I'm going to prove you wrong,
Speaker 1: because she didn't want to believe that that was actually
Speaker 1: like regional profiling was happening in the ad words. And
Speaker 1: she found that a black identified name was twenty more
Speaker 1: likely than a white identified name to get an add
Speaker 1: suggestive of an arrest record, huh, which is troublesome because
Speaker 1: you see that and it does have this sort of
Speaker 1: association of like, well, perhaps this person does have an
Speaker 1: arrest record, right, and then that's just more fire to
Speaker 1: just sort of the subliminal messaging that's coming at you
Speaker 1: through your your search engine, through one of the ways
Speaker 1: that you're interacting with the world, and so at least
Speaker 1: subliminally your search engine is saying, hey, you're the type
Speaker 1: of person who might be arrested, and then you're going
Speaker 1: to absorb that information and have to deal with And
Speaker 1: as David Eagleman might say, the problem with us is
Speaker 1: that all of this is happening under the cover of unconscious.
Speaker 1: Right You're unconscious is meeting all of this out and
Speaker 1: serving it up to your conscious as this idea, and
Speaker 1: you don't even know what's going on. And he calls
Speaker 1: this implicit bias. This implicit bias is within us. We're
Speaker 1: not aware of it. It's it's acting um sort of
Speaker 1: independently to our consciousness. And he said that this is
Speaker 1: borne out in reaction time and hesitations during computer models
Speaker 1: that allow us to like or dislike images or words
Speaker 1: to show how we're driven by our unconscious and he
Speaker 1: gives a couple of examples of this, but the one
Speaker 1: that I like best is um this one that begins
Speaker 1: with a screen that has like and dislike at the
Speaker 1: top of the screen, and then in the middle there
Speaker 1: is a name that appears. So he says, like you
Speaker 1: could have the name of a religion appearing in the middle,
Speaker 1: And he said, what's interesting about this is not just
Speaker 1: the speed of the participants selecting like or dislike, but
Speaker 1: that this program actually tracks the trajectory of the mouse
Speaker 1: movements and it can show the drift. So it shows like,
Speaker 1: maybe you're going toward no, and then you correct yourself
Speaker 1: and go to um or not no, maybe you're going
Speaker 1: towards dislike, and then you correct yourself and go toward
Speaker 1: like UM. And he's saying that that is showing that
Speaker 1: you're you're doing the more social appropriate response. Your conscious
Speaker 1: is catching up to your unconscious and correcting it. So
Speaker 1: he's saying that even people with certainty about their attitudes
Speaker 1: and beliefs um, they can find themselves surprised and sometimes
Speaker 1: appalled by what's lurking within their brains that they're not
Speaker 1: even aware of. So it's it's like the gut reaction
Speaker 1: versus the actual conscious thought reaction. Sort of if someone
Speaker 1: were to say, offer someone a beer for lunch at work,
Speaker 1: their gut instinct might be might be to say yes,
Speaker 1: I would like a beer, and then they're they're conscious
Speaker 1: reaction might be no, I don't drink beer at work,
Speaker 1: or no, I don't drink beer at all. Why would
Speaker 1: I even entertain the idea? But for that split second
Speaker 1: you do yeah, your hand might start to reach out
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh no, no no, no thanks yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So that gets us into this idea of implicit association,
Speaker 1: because that's where we get into this idea of unconscious commonality. So,
Speaker 1: you know, here's a good example that I think we've
Speaker 1: talked about before. If your name is Dennis or Dinny,
Speaker 1: there's some data out there, and Eagleman talks about this
Speaker 1: in his book that you perhaps could become a dentist.
Speaker 1: You're internalizing this association between the way that your your
Speaker 1: name sounds in this profession. Yeah, people Denise or Dennis
Speaker 1: more are disproportionately more likely to become dentist, Laura Lawrence
Speaker 1: more likely to become a lawyer, George or Georgiana more
Speaker 1: likely to become a geologist. Uh. And it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: My my birth name is of course Padrick, so that
Speaker 1: and that is why I became a podcaster. I guess,
Speaker 1: ha ha ha, very nice, Um, Padrick. You know what
Speaker 1: that Nay show up in is like one of the
Speaker 1: most popular baby names really just because of the Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones. Now we're just thinking because of the Profession podcast,
Speaker 1: because everybody will be everybody wants their kid to be
Speaker 1: a podcaster because that's where the money is, alright. So
Speaker 1: another layer of this is something called implicit ego. And
Speaker 1: so that's that not just that unconscious connection that you
Speaker 1: have like oh someone is like me or that's like me,
Speaker 1: but actually feeling like, you know, like your ego is
Speaker 1: bound up in this idea of that thing or that person.
Speaker 1: And we do a lot of this. We've talked about
Speaker 1: this before, when we attach our ego to something. It
Speaker 1: might be a sports team, yea, or or it might
Speaker 1: just be uh, it might be an individual, it might
Speaker 1: be a cup of tea. All right. So here's a
Speaker 1: nice example. Eagleman says that when students read an essay
Speaker 1: by Resputant in this example, uh, they also read a
Speaker 1: bit of biographical detail about Resputing, including his birthday, which
Speaker 1: by the way, was manipulated in the text to be
Speaker 1: the same as the readers. So when they read that
Speaker 1: and that little the little data bit, that student gave
Speaker 1: Resputing a more generous rating. Yeah, that's really interesting. It's
Speaker 1: just just the mere insertion of that date given it
Speaker 1: gives you the subconscious link with this individual, and so
Speaker 1: you feel like a little more than usual, like Gregory
Speaker 1: Resputant is, uh, he's like you, He's is one of me.
Speaker 1: I I I agree with everything he did to some extent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then on another level, it's like, yeah, go January seven,
Speaker 1: the team January seven, all of us who were born
Speaker 1: into there, your your winner. Oh man. I actually experienced
Speaker 1: this quiet a lot when I'm taking the train to work,
Speaker 1: because I take the westbound train and then I take
Speaker 1: the North Brown train. When I'm waiting on the North
Speaker 1: Brown trained air to northbound trains, one is the Doorville train,
Speaker 1: one is the North Springs Only the North Springs train
Speaker 1: actually will get me all the way to work. And
Speaker 1: so I'll find myself, uh, standing there the Doorville train arrives,
Speaker 1: the wrong train arrives, and people are getting on board,
Speaker 1: and I'll actually think to myself, all those Doorville train people,
Speaker 1: they're the worst, just judging on the hardcore, even though
Speaker 1: there's there's like one. And then I asked me, why
Speaker 1: am I doing that? Why am I attaching my ego
Speaker 1: to the to the North Springs train and judging everyone
Speaker 1: who rides the Doorville train. Star Billy Sneeches my friend exactly.
Speaker 1: Dr SEUs shows up again in the podcast, so you know,
Speaker 1: you also have priming going on too. Some of it's unconscious,
Speaker 1: some of it's not so unconscious. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: Alison louder Milk because she shared with me that she
Speaker 1: this is actually implicit ego and priming. She shared with
Speaker 1: me that she buys Almond milk because she really enjoys
Speaker 1: the layout, the graphic layout of Almond milk, and it
Speaker 1: also kind of reminds her of her name, Alison louder
Speaker 1: Milk Almond Milk. Interesting. That was because this is another
Speaker 1: study that David Equlman brings up where they they had
Speaker 1: consumers test subjects um consider different brands of fictional teas,
Speaker 1: and they were more likely to go with the fictional
Speaker 1: tea that contained the first three letters of their first name. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is why, of course I like Robina
Speaker 1: tea and you like Juilliard Tea. Yes, I love Juilliard Tea.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I don't think they're all their real tees.
Speaker 1: But but but the idea is that we would be
Speaker 1: drawn to those brands in theory because they contain bits
Speaker 1: of our name and in a sense are a bit
Speaker 1: of us. Gosh, don't you just feel like such a
Speaker 1: simple ton. Sometimes that's the kind of stuff that gives
Speaker 1: you like sometimes like a glorious being in the universe
Speaker 1: taking in all the wonderments of life. And then sometimes
Speaker 1: you're like cash, we're just such simpletons, just you know,
Speaker 1: being manipulated left and right. Were not even knowing it. Well,
Speaker 1: because so much of our experience of the world, understanding
Speaker 1: of in our culture is based in language, and again
Speaker 1: this kind of these kind of free associations, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a flaw in the system. You're just kind
Speaker 1: of a side effect of this system being in place. Well,
Speaker 1: I will tell you, um, having done the research on this,
Speaker 1: I have decided that if I do have another child,
Speaker 1: I know the exact perfect name to give that child.
Speaker 1: Oh let's hear it. Okay, nominative determinism okay, or in
Speaker 1: D yeah yeah, or your namdi yeah, nam D. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty good one. Pretty good. Yeah. I mean, don't
Speaker 1: you think like that they'd have to explain that name
Speaker 1: over and over again, and they'd be super aware of
Speaker 1: everything they did, everything that they perceived, and they would
Speaker 1: just be really over analytical and perhaps even in a
Speaker 1: fetal position as a result, And that idea to change
Speaker 1: it eventially too, because didn't Moon the unit Zappa. Did
Speaker 1: she change it? Seems like I thought she might have changed.
Speaker 1: Maybe she just goes by Moon. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like, if you're a Zappa kid, you just
Speaker 1: roll with it. Probably, But I have her tales of
Speaker 1: children with sort of hippie dream child names changing them
Speaker 1: to more socially normal acceptable names, because again that comes
Speaker 1: back to just the whole idea of the name is
Speaker 1: so weird, because like, I have a really normal name,
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. There's nothing phenomenal about it except that the
Speaker 1: last name inspires the image of an animal and forces
Speaker 1: children to make buying noises actually throughout school. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, it's a normal name. So I've never
Speaker 1: really felt a particular attachment to it. I've never hated it,
Speaker 1: but I'm just kind of like, oh, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. But so it made me want to give
Speaker 1: my son a name that really stood out and was amazing.
Speaker 1: But then, as we've discussed here, that's not necessarily the
Speaker 1: way to go well, and that's what some of this, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the articles that we read sort of touched on.
Speaker 1: When you look at a name. Essentially, it is it
Speaker 1: is sort of all the hopes and fears that a
Speaker 1: parent puts into that name for the child. So it
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense that, you know, people would name
Speaker 1: their children, uh more normal names if they really thought
Speaker 1: that was important that you assimilate to society, or a
Speaker 1: unique name, if they really thought that individualism was very important.
Speaker 1: So you can kind of see all of that at plane.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. Yeah, and I guess that's where middle names
Speaker 1: are nice. You can throw a little something in there
Speaker 1: so that they can eventually choose. Do they want to
Speaker 1: go by the first name, they want to go by
Speaker 1: the middle name, do they want to go with initials?
Speaker 1: Give them some this is my take on the matter. Anyway,
Speaker 1: give them some options so that they can change their
Speaker 1: identity around in a way that that suits their needs
Speaker 1: at the time. Because inevitably, children are going to go
Speaker 1: through periods where they're going to really want to assimilate,
Speaker 1: where assimilation is part of their genetic mission to blend
Speaker 1: in so that they can actually survive long enough to breed. Uh.
Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, they're going to reach
Speaker 1: a point inevitably or hopefully inevitably where they want to
Speaker 1: stand out where they want to be their own person
Speaker 1: and be unique. All right, So there you go a little,
Speaker 1: a little insight into the naming process. All of you
Speaker 1: have names, and if and if you don't have a name,
Speaker 1: actually that's even more amazing. Is that even possible? Can
Speaker 1: you not name? I don't think so to name somebody
Speaker 1: just a blank, you know, just an absence of name
Speaker 1: and that becomes the name whoa And how emotionally saddled
Speaker 1: would you be with the absence of a being, of
Speaker 1: a name of a sound. Right, I was about to
Speaker 1: wrap that up with a being with a name with
Speaker 1: a sound. But in round. So all of you have names,
Speaker 1: A number of you have have engaged in the naming process.
Speaker 1: So we'd love to hear from everyone. How have you
Speaker 1: grown up with your name? How is it affected your
Speaker 1: out come in life? What kind of thought did you
Speaker 1: put into naming your child? If you happen to have
Speaker 1: one of those, let us know. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear from. You can find us in all the normal places.
Speaker 1: The mothership is of course stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That is deep place to go for your
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind fix you will find all
Speaker 1: of the podcast episodes. You will find over a thousand
Speaker 1: blog posts and counting. You will find videos. You will
Speaker 1: find links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: our YouTube account, Mind Stuff Show and Hey. If you
Speaker 1: have name regret and you want to share with us
Speaker 1: the name you wish you had been given, you can
Speaker 1: do that. Um you can share any other stories you
Speaker 1: have with us about names, so send us an email
Speaker 1: at below The mind at Discovery dot com For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, Does it How
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com