If You're A Mom That Frequently Calls Your Children By The Wrong Name, Science Can Finally Explain Why

Sep 19, 2018

If you have siblings, do you ever remember your mom getting your name mixed up with theirs while you were growing up? As a mom do you sometimes get your kids' names confused when you're calling for them? Maybe if you've found yourself doing this sort of thing on a regular basis you've started to wonder if you're losing your mind. If you can relate to this problem, you don't need to feel bad about it anymore.

This psychological phenomenon is both extremely common and totally normal.

The tendency to either occasionally or frequently misname our family members has a logical, scientific explanation. Based on some interesting research, scientists have pinpointed the reason why moms so often call their children by the wrong name, and why that wrong name is so frequently one of their other children's names.

Researchers from Duke University have discovered that because we're so emotionally attached to the various members of our immediate families, their names are linked together in our minds. The research team surveyed 1,700 different people to find their results.

The people involved in the study were asked both about whether they had been misnamed by other family members at some point in their lives. They were also asked which names had been mistakenly assigned to them.

The results all pointed in the very direction researchers initially suspected when they started the study. Most people who misname others do so based on the fact that they are similarly related to the people they tend to misname. In other words, moms frequently tend to call their children by the names of their other children because they share the same mother/child relationship category in the mom's brain.

Amusingly, many participants of the study also reported that they've been misnamed as the family pet before! That just goes to show that many people mentally categorize their pets as genuine members of the family!

According to the study's findings, misnaming is a feature of social grouping. If a family member designates someone in their family accidentally by the wrong name, chances are high that they'll assign the name of another close family member. In contrast, it's extremely rare for a person to misname their family member with a name outside of the family unit.

Comparably, if a person misnames one of their friends they often tend to call them by another member of that particular group of close friends. The same is true for co-workers and other social groups we all tend to form in our lives. The members of these different groups all tend to be mentally linked together in our brains. Scientists would refer to these mental and social connections as "neural networks."

So if you're a mom and you find yourself shuffling through all of your kids' names on a regular basis as they chuckle at you, take heart. You're not alone, and there's nothing wrong with you. In fact, it's a sign that you probably love all of your kids so much that their neural network inside your mind is especially closely linked together.

If you're on the other end of misnaming and you get annoyed at your mom for calling you by your siblings' names, this article can remind you to show a little extra patience. Your mom really can't help it. It's just the way her brain is wired. In fact, you can be thankful that she feels a close enough connection to you and your siblings to get you mixed up!

Can you relate to the findings of this study? Do you find yourself more frequently being misnamed, or misnaming others? We'd love to read your thoughts in the comments! Pass this story along to your friends and family so they too can learn the fascinating science behind this common phenomenon!