Do you keep changing people’s names? Find out why this happens

You must have been through the situation of having your name confused by someone. This is totally understandable when it comes to little-known people: frankly speaking, we don’t remember what they’re called because they don’t arouse our interest. But why does this happen to family members?

O awesome.club researched and discovered what causes the phenomenon.

According to research from Duke University (USA), it is quite common for even close relatives to confuse each other’s names. Your grandmother might call you by your father’s name, your father by your grandfather’s, while your mother keeps changing your sisters’ names. Is it lack of love and attention? In fact, it’s just the opposite.

The researchers conducted five studies, involving a total of 1,700 people. In the first one, it was found that the phenomenon is very common, as half of the volunteers confessed that, on some occasion, their name was changed by someone close to them. In the other four surveys, they were asked in what kind of situation this type of confusion most often occurred, as well as the point of view of the person who makes the mistake and the one who is called by a name that is not his or her own.

our brain stores the names in different affinity blocksgathering information about the people linked to the same group🇧🇷 It became clear that the physical resemblance has nothing to do with the names we confuse; what exists is a certain effect according to age and gender. “It happens more often to older people, especially women. The mother is more likely to change the names of her children”, pointed out Samantha Deffler, one of the authors of the research.

On the other hand, the phonetic similarity interferes with the confusion, either because of names that begin or end similarly or that have similar vowels.

It was also shown that the misunderstanding occurs between the name of a brother with those of others, and with that of a friend with other friends, regardless of genderbeing possible to confuse “Mauricio” with “Mariana”, for example.

It is possible that the names cause us trouble for do not guarantee much meaning nor a large amount of information about a person. Knowing only someone’s name does not provide us with concrete data about the individual. When we have a relationship with a certain person and we know them well, we tend to associate our memories with them. However, it is super normal to get confused when it comes to names, because of their characteristics and the categories in which we store them.

Pets are part of our daily lives, and it has been proven that we especially include our dogs in the family category. Therefore, the name of the animal enters the list of family members. “It is almost always the names of the dogs that we confuse, more than those of other animals. Perhaps because dogs are more integrated into our concept of family than the cat, for example.”

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one suffering from this. We’ve all been on one side or the other. We changed someone’s name or had our name changed. It’s not that your brother is your grandmother’s favorite, or that your mother compares you to the house dog. And that doesn’t just affect distracted people, because it’s a cognitive error: precisely because of this, the biggest culprit is your brain and the way it selects and stores information.

Well, you can rest easy and don’t take it personally if someone misses your name. Has it ever happened to you? What names have you been called? Comment!