That’s not my name – why we sometimes misname friends and relatives

Do you have a relative who works their way through all your siblings’ and cousins’ names (maybe even the dog’s name) before calling you by your own? You might even have found yourself calling your own toddler the wrong name – so, why does this happen and what does it tell us about memory and learning words?  

We know that using categories is one of the ways our toddlers (and all of us) learn about the world. When your toddler learns a new word, it will be remembered as part of a category. Remembering something involves a process of encoding the memory – and this is where it is linked to a category.  

Storing information about people – semantic relatedness 

When we remember information, we make links with things we already know – for example, your toddler might remember names of children at nursery as part of the same category.  

The links we make between bits of information are known as semantic relatedness – so when your relative is remembering family members, they’re drawing on memories in the same category.  

Why do people use the wrong name? (Quick spoiler – don't take it personally – and if you do it sometimes, don’t worry!) 

Research has shown that there seem to be a few possible explanations for misnaming, or perhaps more accurately some features that make misnaming more likely to happen.  

Semantic factors – misnaming is more likely to involve using the name of someone in the same social group.  

This includes things like calling a family member the name of a different relative.  

Phonological factors – misnaming is more likely when people’s names sound similar.  

So, if you’re a Tim, with a brother called Tom you’re more likely to have been misnamed! 

Misnaming and recalling words – memory and phonology 

Finding these semantic and phonological factors in misnaming gives us a possible insight into learning to talk.  

The fact that these both seem to be factors in misnaming, shows that saying the wrong name can happen at different points in the process of speech. Saying a word involves remembering and then producing the correct sounds, and you might notice that as they learn your toddler makes mistakes at different points in this process.  

And finally …. 

Another interesting finding in this research is that even when people had both a cat and a dog, a dog’s name was more likely to be used when misnaming a person, than a cat’s name.  

The researchers think this might show we classify dogs as family members more often than we do cats. So, if you call your toddler by your dog's name, be reassured you won’t be the only one who’s done that!  

Reference: 

Deffler, S.A., Fox, C., Ogle, C.M., & Rubin, D.C. (2016). ‘All my children: The roles of semantic category and phonetic similarity in the misnaming of familiar individuals.’ Memory and Cognition, 44, 989-999.