There’s nothing as entertaining as watching kids navigate through the big complex world. From an early age, they start meeting new people, socializing with other kids and adults, learning how the social cues and norms work in practice.
That’s where things may get a teeny tiny bit confusing for the little ones. “My 8yo daughter met a girl at summer camp last year named 'Internet.' I said no way, that can't be her name but my daughter has been adamant,” tweeted writer and mom Brianne M. Kohl and added that “For almost a year we've been having this discussion.”
Turns out, the name of that girl from the summer camp was “Antoinette.” The thread immediately blew up on Twitter with many parents sharing similar experiences about their kids getting the names totally wrong. Even adults joined in the fun and shared times they embarrassed themselves by getting confused by people's names.
Below we selected some of the most chuckle-worthy tweets that prove getting a name absurdly wrong is apparently a common occurrence in the children's kingdom.
Image credits: BrianneKohl
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By far my favourite on this thread, I love it. Bless her heart! My Nan has her own words for lots of things, and if she can't say someone's name she'll use one that she thinks sounds similar. My best friend of 22 years is called Kirstyn, Nan has always called her Christine..
We spoke with Samantha A. Deffler, an Assistant Professor Of Psychology at York College of Pennsylvania, who shared some very interesting insights into her research about the misnaming phenomenon. “In surveys of people from a range of ages and backgrounds, we found that misnaming of familiar people was rather common,” she said.
“To be more specific, a sample of undergraduates showed over half reported being misnamed and about 1/3 reported committing misnaming. Of those who had been misnamed, most (95%) said they had been called the wrong name by a family member,” Deffler explained.
“My colleagues and I think that this phenomenon demonstrates how people organize information about those that they know - people tended to mistake family members for other family members, probably because they were grouping these individuals together in their minds.”
Moreover, according to Deffler, ‘cross-group’ mistakes were less common “because people from different categories of our lives (e.g., family vs. friends) are not typically associated with each other in our minds.” More broadly, Deffler believes that their findings also point out “that our cognition, particularly our memories, can be flawed - people make naming mistakes even with names that they know really really well, and that is OK and normal!”
Deffler and her team of researchers surveyed people from a lot of different backgrounds and asked them both about being the object of misnaming and the person who committed the misnaming. “We found a range of results for how often older family members misnamed younger family members, but that is likely an artifact of our sample - some of our participants were younger adults without children. We did not specifically look at parent to child misnaming, but our results do allow me to answer this question,” she explained.
It turns out that most misnaming occurred between two family members and for 3 of our 4 samples, “this misnaming showed a large age effect - family members who were older misnamed younger family members. Anecdotally, a lot of these examples were parents misnaming their children with a string of sibling names,” Deffler concluded.
Meanwhile, Lynn How, the experienced educator and author of “Positive Young Minds” and this Facebook teacher coaching group told Bored Panda that how hard it is for a child to get a stranger's name right depends on the individual child and complexity of a name. “Young children are unable to form some sounds so end up calling people by a simpler name e.g. auntie Charlotte might become auntie Lot Lot. Children need repetition to store names in their memory so until a stranger becomes a friend, then it might be tricky to recall their name unless they have an amazing memory,” she explained.
My daughter accidentally wrote some erotica in third grade last year. She uses talk-to-text and has a very squeaky voice. She began a reading response with "it was jeremy's..." but the program heard "penis gummies". I'm glad I checked her homework that day before she submitted it (I didn't always). I did tell her teacher later because it was too funny not to share and also as a warning that talk-to-text does not always hear my daughter correctly.
When asked how common naming mistakes are among adults and kids, Lynn said they’re very common, especially if we see someone out of context. “If I see a student in a shop, I might not be able to recall who they are even though I would in school,” she said.
Lynn continued: “Some people are better at recognizing faces, not names. If the name is unfamiliar and complex, it will be more challenging to recall it unless you have committed it to memory with a conscious effort. This can be tricky as people can be quite upset when you can’t remember! I try to get round this by not using their name when I greet them and ask questions that might give me hints without letting on!”
According to Lynn, the best activity for remembering names on a recent course was to spend 45 minutes with each participant discussing the origin and importance of their names. “I embedded 15 names in my memory easily with this exercise—this has never happened before,” she laughed.
It's no secret that parents and teachers mix up kids' names very often. Lynn said that this is quite normal. She quoted Deffler, a cognitive scientist who states that, “It's a normal cognitive glitch. It's not related to a bad memory or to aging, but rather to how the brain categorizes names. It's like having special folders for family names and friends names stored in the brain. When people used the wrong name, overwhelmingly the name that was used was in the same category, was in the same folder.”
My favourite YT gamer is Jesse C*x. And bet they will censor out the surname on BP. EDIT: Damn this ridiculous censorship. Anyway, if anyone likes to watch/listen to game playthroughs, I do recommend Jesse C0x, or at least his earlier work.
Does the name 'Paul' not exist in the USA? How different is the pronunciation? I mean, Paul Walker was from California. EDIT: Guys, please stop arguing...
You can tell by the way i stand at the dock I'm a Woman's man it's time to dock. . .
He used to be called Graype but one day he stayed out in the sun too long.
Reminds me of the time my cousin (early 20s) had missed a phone call from a friend to announce she'd had her baby. Her teenage brother took the call instead -- and when he was informing his sister of the news, of course she asked, "What did they name the baby?" The brother replied, "I dunno. Something like May I Have A Cookie." The baby's name was Mahalia Corrine.
I know a girl named Landrey and a few of my friends call her Laundry instead. They used to joke about us being in a lesbian relationship bc they know I hate jokes like that and they would say "Did you do Laundry last night?"
My friend Erin's dad always called marigolds "eringolds" while she was growing up, so sweet.
I actually do know someone whose first name is Princess, so it's not a crazy assumption.
Ha, I love it. When I was 3, I kept calling my mom's friend Tish "Tush" instead and didn't understand why they were cracking up...
LMAO I did this w/ my sister's friend. I thought her name was Tuna Cole b/c whenever I'd ask where she was going, she'd say, "To Nicole's...." LOL
poor reece, being called 'greasy' can be a huge insult if used correctly.
I remember a coworker telling a story of how she dropped off her son Blake for his first day of school, and when she went to pick him up, all his classmates were waving goodbye and shouting, "Bye Blank! Bye Blank!!"
I've heard "memaw" and "pepaw" as grandma and grandpa quite a few times.
If anything should changed, a space needs to be added so "Danger" is her middle name!
look, even if it's a kid, why would you try to correct him on his name? it's his name, he's grown up hearing it & learning it. i think he knows how his own damn name is pronounced, even if it isn't how the name is usually said.
My grandsons first word is Dildo. Clear as day, he calls everything dildo, I'm hoping he's trying to say Willow, which is his dogs name. Rather embarrassing when we went out for lunch with my Dad and my grandson kept calling him dildo 🤦
Two of my grandfather's brothers were Laurie and Maurie. I found it funny they would have such similar sounding ones. Then I found out they were their nicknames, their real names were Lawrence and Maurice.
Lol and the daughter didn't even try to correct her 😆 she must've been chuckling every time her mom said "Martha"
Met a girl in Seoul - "I'm Su-Hai". "Nice to meet you Su-Hai." Hung out for a few days before she said, "Why do you always call me 'Su-Hai'? It's just 'Su'". Turns out she said "I'm Su, hi." She wasn't good at pauses.
My nephew would scream Fucktruck for firetruck whenever he saw or heard the truck or siren, ambulances too.
To keep my language clean, I use a word that begins with "F" and ends with "uck." Firetruck!
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Met a girl in Seoul - "I'm Su-Hai". "Nice to meet you Su-Hai." Hung out for a few days before she said, "Why do you always call me 'Su-Hai'? It's just 'Su'". Turns out she said "I'm Su, hi." She wasn't good at pauses.
My nephew would scream Fucktruck for firetruck whenever he saw or heard the truck or siren, ambulances too.
To keep my language clean, I use a word that begins with "F" and ends with "uck." Firetruck!
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