Those of you who know me in the real world will understand why my eye was grabbed by an article entitled, Names really do make a difference.
Turns out the article is about how names direct people's expectations about an individual, and how individuals are influenced by this. Kind of interesting, though not as novel as I was hoping.
One piece I hadn't heard about before is the idea that giving your daughter a 'feminine' name will make her less likely to study math or science. So if you want a math whiz for a daughter, whatever you do don't name her Isabella or Anna, because hearing her 'feminine' name will remind her that she doesn't belong in any masculine subject areas! They even included a twin study in which the twin with the 'masculine' name was found to be more likely to study higher level math or science.
I was all happy reading this, because it seemed to support my intention to name a daughter Raptor Bonesaw in order to prepare her for a life of conquest and ruthless domination. But then I read that, according to UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian, "Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish."
Well drat.
6 Comments:
But- of the three (ignorant, arrogant, or foolish) you do have one or two of those qualities- so why not go for your life long dream of having a Raptor Bonesaw? No one ever said that being arrogant is a *bad* thing. (-: Of course, if you have a boy that means you need to name him Lilly or something...
The first time I read that I thought he was an ACLU psych professor, and I was about to cancel my membership. Besides, I have an extremely manly name and I can barely count.
Aaron is home, and enbearded. You should come home too.
That would explain why I still have the sheen of my early 20s despite them being long gone, most people with my name are much much younger than me.
I didn't do it on purpose, someone asked me about after about eight plays, but I tend to give character 'sexless' (spellcheck failed me and I had to go with the less satisfying second word choice) names. Characters with more sex specific names tend to be the 'weaker' characters, looks like even fictional characters can be subject to that.
Names appear to be the topic of the day...one of my friends, who has breast cancer, is naming her breasts (like the fellow in Lady Chatterly's Lover did for his er nether regions), the better to work with healing imagery as she finishes yet another stage of treatment. I will pass along the revelation that if she wants them (since they can be presumed to be girls) to be good at math and science, Lucy and Louisa (her current favorites) may be too feminine.
And I think Raptor Bonesaw is an improvement over "Spot" for a name for a granchild. But maybe you should keep working on it.
----Glinda
Don't be ashamed--we had Mr. Whiskers up as a name for male child for a couple of weeks.
And oh--tag.
Huh... guess Rosie (short for Rhoswen) is a bad choice then... of course, math and I have never bee on particularly good terms anyway... *shakes fist at parents for the girly name*
And oh hey, when abouts are you and Himself going to be in town this summer? You need to see our house and our dog and our bird and our us.
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