Tuesday, July 12, 2011

ummm, and your name is????

Know something I find weird and kinda interesting?

I mess up my kids names, starting with one's and then realising I'm doing it wrong and switching mid word.  I'll also call randomly use the dog, the man (oh how he hates that) and the boy's names.  We're hanging out with a friend's kid whose also a friend right now, he's almost 11.

What interests me about this is that I, and most adults, will misassign names to kids and siblings etc... (I have been known to call eldest by my sister's name for example) fairly often, but I believe that we mostly err within gender boundries.  What I am trying to say is that I will mess up boys names within boys (including the dog) and girls names within girls, but rarely do I assign boys names to girls or vice versa, indeed I think I could count that on one hand.

It seems odd to me, or interesting, that we (or at least I) filter name searches so strongly through gender...even with family.

Strange, no?

5 comments:

kate said...

At school I sometimes switch names, but they are ones that sound similar, and mostly ones that I have more than one student with (like Ainhoa/Aroa/Aitana. After all, I do have 75 students each day...) There was one girl named Elisa that a couple of times I called Elías (my son's name) but that's the only cross-gender-boundaries mistake I can think of.

swenglishexpat said...

Then I am strange too! I often mix up the names of my brother and my son, when talking about them. I stop in mid-word and switch. Nice to know I am not the only one.

oreneta said...

Kate, I don't have such a problem at school, but again, similar names....

Swenglish....two (and many more)'s company!
Better luck on the bird photos next time.

Mother Theresa said...

I sometimes mess up my kids' names too, but I can't say about the gender thing since we have all girls. But it kind of makes sense, I guess. Usually, the first thing you identify about someone is their gender, it's that important to our brains. Actually, this would make an interesting psychological study...

oreneta said...

Exactly!!! I too think it would make a fascinating study.