What's in a name?
Men who change their surname when they get married are still unusual. Why is it important to some?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill, Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing names. You've got something to tell us, a little story to tell us about names.
Speaker B:Yeah, there was an interesting, there was a fun story in the BBC a few months ago about men taking on the name of their wife when they were married. Hilda, Janice. For example, yeah, well not as their first name but taking on their wife's surname. So the men would essentially have a maiden name. So it seems fairly uncontroversial to our sort of educated middle class London types but apparently... No, it sounds preposterous.
Speaker C:A lot of people, it's quite... What is it apart from being an affectation? That's all it can be.
Speaker B:Well no, the story had two people who wrote in in response to another story and they...
Speaker A:What was the original story? Can you, I mean...
Speaker B:I can't remember what the original story was but the story that I'm referring to is there were a couple of stories where people had written in and described their experience, why they did it and problems that they'd had as a result and the reasons are sound. They took their name because their wife was an only child and so the name would die out. So just out of affection and for and continuing that name then they chose to take it. Just rational reasons. Why does one name, why should one name have any more prevalence over the other? But yeah, the story's all full of positive things like they relished in sort of recoiling against the man by waiting for the... Being delighted to take a mail and fill out the maiden name box because they knew that would in some way confuse the system. Yeah, they're doing it to make a point basically. No, no, I don't think that's the... Well, I think it wasn't... In one of the instances wasn't the
Speaker D:name actually quite a rare name that was sort of in danger of dying out. Yeah, I think it was
Speaker C:just a rare South African name. Well, you could give that name to your children without... Bypass, get rid of the middleman and not bother changing your own name. That's a good point. People are doing this, are doing it to make a point and I've got no problem with that but let's just be honest about it, doing it to make a point. That may be. But
Speaker B:anyway, that's not what... But what was interesting I found in the stories was that the problems that they faced. So there was one of the chapters, he managed various portfolios in terms of property and his boss sort of almost demanded that he reverse this decision. So massively overstepping the mark in terms of as an employer but saying, you know, you should have consulted me first before you change your name because all your clients know you was this one thing. And actually I think if you spoke to most of the clients, they'd probably get it, right? They'd probably
Speaker C:understand. We're going to have to change the name of the company now from Smith and Westerby to Zagozian and Westerby. Well, it's a big cost in terms of the stationery. But I mean, look,
Speaker A:so there was this sort of negative reaction from the boss and were there other negative reactions?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, yes. So there was from one of the chaps, from one of his families, they felt betrayed. They felt this was a terrible slight on them that one of their offspring had chosen to ditch their name in favor of another. So yeah, but why? Lighten up, guys. I mean, what's wrong?
Speaker A:It's only a name. So I've got quite strong feelings about this, actually. Surprisingly
Speaker D:so. But yeah, what do we think, chaps? Well, I mean, I was going to say that, you know, it begs the question, why do married couples have the same name in the first place? And I think there is value in terms of the information you're giving to other people. There is value in a family unit having the same surname. So I can see why that convention applies regardless of gender. And, you know, what it does is effectively then when you have children, you know, it sort of informs everyone that you're part of this same family unit. And if you want to signal that to other people, then that's a valuable thing to do. But I think, you know, there are obviously going to be interesting issues coming up, you know, now as we get more and more same sex marriages. You know, if there is, because obviously there's no particular reason why it should be the, you know, tradition should state that it should be the man's name that gets taken. But, you know, you need some way of deciding, you can't continue double-barrelling names, for example, you know, that only works for one generation. What do you do after? I did get thinking that would be quite a
Speaker B:fun way of tracing genealogy and you get, you know, two to the power of number of generations, length of name. Yeah. You retain all information about that. If only there was some way to
Speaker C:unambiguously tell someone's lineage, for example, by testing something physical about them. But, you know, that will just have to remain an impossible dream. Yeah. I mean, given that we have, you know, DNA, why does it bother people so much about what names their kids have? And I say that as someone who it does bother, like the fact that my kids have my name, because I'm an only child and I come from the next generation up. There's four of them. And I'm the only child produced out of that four brothers and sisters. And so, you know, I feel like it's great that my name carries on. Kids care about names. They talk about a lot about, you know, the fact that I've got a different name to my partner and, you know, that they're sort of one or the other, or are they both? And they obviously it is a key thing, you know, for us to get worked up about. But I
Speaker D:can't think of any reason why. There's no really good reason. Well, I suppose it becomes relevant to your identity. So your name becomes relevant to your identity. And the reason for that is probably because it is some signal of information about yourself. So if you, you know, if you value where you come from, and if you value, you know, who your sort of ancestors are, and so on, then, and that becomes part of your identity. Oh, I'm a person from this, you know, this place and of this, you know, particular group, then name is part of that, because it carries some of that information. I think, you know, this is really an issue about the roles that names play
Speaker C:in divulging information. Yeah, and I think it's interesting that we have the bit you can't change, and the bit you can change. That's a really good compromise, actually. So you have your family name, which you can't change unless you're going to be, you know, going to really go out on a limb. And that gives information that about your heritage, and your cultural background, potentially, and various other things. And then you have the short term bit, which is what your parents chose to call you, which tells you a huge amount about them, and about the kind of culture that you come from, you know, and about your social status, probably about your income, tells you lots
Speaker D:of information, your name. It's almost, you know, it's almost analogous to your sort of, you know, part of it being us as individuals being formed by our choices, and the environment we, you know, exist in, and our genetic inheritance. The name sort of, you know, the 50-50 element of it almost
Speaker A:sort of mirrors that. I mean, I was just sitting here thinking about our names. I mean, you three have got really sort of, and I guess what you can tell about someone from their name, as you were saying from their first name. So we've got Peter, Nick, and Chris, just very kind of solid, traditional names, and you kind of look like one would imagine a Peter, Chris, and Nick to look like. Barely distinguishable from one another, yeah. But that's the thing, right? White, middle class, middle-aged, I mean. Exactly, and you know, so
Speaker D:a name, when you hear somebody's name, you know, for the first time, you form a picture of them in your mind, and that's, you know, there's nothing doing that other than the information carried within, you know, those words that form their name, and you know, that can be useful to us, right? So we're like, oh, okay, you know, this person's male, you know, if they've got a male name, and you know, I know roughly what kind of person I'm going to be meeting, so that's useful, how old they are, all that kind of stuff. But it can also obviously be bad. So, you know, I mean, there have been several documented studies showing that particular, you know, names associated with particular ethnic groups are less likely to be called forward for job interviews from identical CVs, but one with a, you know, perhaps an African American name, and one with a white-sounding name, and that, you know, these studies have been carried out in the US, and have documented that effect. So, you know, they can obviously, it can obviously be valuable, but it can also play into bias and prejudice.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, because there is this school of thought that says, well, why do, you know, African Americans use these distinctive sort of forms of names, when they could, you know, when they could choose sort of white-sounding names, and that would give their kids a leg up? And then, well, the answer is that...
Speaker B:A lot of naturalized sort of East, Southeast Asian people do that. So I know a number of people from school and university who are of Chinese or Korean descent, and they've got very Anglo-Saxon names, like Mary and Joe.
Speaker C:Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, so, you know, that's one possible response, but my, you know, my reaction would be, well, if I discovered that people with German-sounding names were more successful, would that incentivize me to call my kids Hans and Friedrich? Well, it would feel wrong to do that. You know, this clearly is important to us, not just to choose names that are going to be successful, but choose names that are going to be, in some way, reflect us, you know, which are going to respect our own heritage.
Speaker D:And, you know, the reactions you were talking about in those cases where people were sort of not disowned by their family, but certainly, you know, slightly ostracized by their family for ditching their own name against convention, shows that names are an emotive thing, and you don't, you know, you don't necessarily own your own name. You know, it's shared by, you know, a surname is shared by those who also have the name.
Speaker A:But I think it sort of demonstrates the sort of the, essentially, we're talking about cultural norms here, and just how emotionally attached within a culture we are to the idea that a man keeps his name when he marries, and just how uncomfortable it is for everyone else, or anyone else. I mean, if I was working with a person who did that, I would feel very odd about it. I wouldn't go into, I wouldn't go and tell them to change their name, but I would find it really strange.
Speaker B:You'd gossip about them around the coffee machine?
Speaker C:I definitely would. I would harbour the suspicion that they would be divorced a year later, and he would be stuck having to go back to changing his name back.
Speaker D:But I mean, this, you know, this, and I can see why this is a, you know, quite a controversial issue. You know, because the convention, well, I mean, it goes back beyond sort of law, but was kind of enshrined in law, in the coverture laws of the Middle Ages, when it was almost mandated that a woman took on her husband's name. And that was signalling, you know, the fact that in law, he took over her legal obligations and legal rights effectively, you know, and that was enshrined. So, you know, I completely understand the, you know, the feminist movement against the sort of patriarchal, you know, approach to taking on the man's name. But it, you know, there needs to be some system for deciding, you know, when two people with surnames come together, you can't, as I said, continually double barrel or you can't, you know, always use as a middle name. So how, what is the most sensible way to decide how to pass on an, you know, a name now? What is fair? Peter's going to say that there's a blockchain based solution.
Speaker B:I'm going to say everyone should have a randomly assigned number, like an IP address.
Speaker C:Yeah, but why not? Why not have eternally double barrelled names, you know, and you just choose one at random on any given day. But your name, I mean, there's no constraint. Is there in data
Speaker B:storage anymore? Why couldn't you just carry on? So I think it's just a constraint in kind of
Speaker D:practical ability of saying things. In France, for example, the woman as her legal name retains her own name, but in day to day life, uses, you know, her husband's name. I think that's the way
Speaker B: an aristocrat who died in the: Speaker C:What would your name be if we all, yeah, my name would be, if you had all four grandparents, they all had their name, if you were able to double barrel it up, what would you be?
Speaker A:The, I don't know. I don't, I don't know my grandparents' names. They all died about
Speaker C:50 years before I was born. I'd be, I think I'd be Hare Cornell Hanny Joyce, which doesn't, they don't all work together really. And then you've got to decide what order
Speaker B:they go in. Do you put the paternal name first? Yeah. You see, I just don't think this is a
Speaker D:practical solution. Yes, we're already confused. Exactly. And so, you know, there must be somewhere. And also you would lose the information value or rather you would lose the information succinctness, you know. So, you know, traditionally in this country, if you get somebody with a double barrelled name, that tells you something about them, right? That their parents are tosspots. Their parents are tosspots. Yeah. Or, you know, that they're usually, usually posh. And then it became, you know, less the case. But, you know, I think surnames are just a very interesting, you know, you get these sort of genealogical myths that kind of come around names. So, you know, my surname is from a very, quite a small geographic area in the UK and is still very common in that area and much less common in other areas. And it's only when I go into South Yorkshire, which is where it comes from, if I give my surname, that people can actually spell it properly. And, you know, so it's just an interesting phenomenon that, you know, we, that we need to find some modern equitable solution.
Speaker C: call their kids Hubert in the: Speaker A:Yeah, I've got a cousin called Barry and I try and imagine him as a baby. You can't imagine a
Speaker C:baby Barry. It's impossible. So, I've done the data analysis and if you want a name which is at the moment, as far as we can tell, one of the most spread out, conveys the least information about when someone was born, then you're looking at calling them good old-fashioned names like James, John, Thomas, my own son's name, because I did this analysis and that's what I wanted. You've got William, David, Robert, Michael, George, these, you know, eternally popular, and the ever-popular Peter. So, yeah, the person obviously is hugely obnoxious, but the name is popular. So, those are the kinds of names you should go for, but if you want. Only if you
Speaker A:want them to be, no, but the flip side is, let's make it as sort of, as vague and anonymous as
Speaker C:possible. Yeah, right, right, but exactly, but don't, one thing you shouldn't do is think that your name is going to be unique, because the one thing, because there are huge trends in names, right, they're really, really strong, especially in girls' names, and if you think that, well, you know, if you take sort of 15 years ago, 20 years ago, Jordan, huge name, big name for girls, loads of names, loads of girls called Jordan, right? Now, they all thought that, you know, Jordan was a brilliant choice for their little girl, but, you know, the point is that now in 30 years' time, Jordan is going to be, you know, 50-year-olds are all going to be called Jordan, when you hear about someone called Jordan, people will be making jokes about people called Jordan, they'll be meddling middle-aged women, you know, so that's all I'm saying, that's my practical advice, is if you don't want your kid to be saddled with some kind of name that is going to mark them out as distinctively something, go for the names that have never really gone up or
Speaker B:down, and we can go a stage further, if you're worried about sexism, then choose a gender-neutral name, and I'm a huge fan of an American trend, which has quite, you know, been around for decades, of naming people for people of note or members of family, but using their surname, and giving the surname as a first name to somebody, so lots of Americans call Jefferson after that. It's absurd. I think it's quite a neat thing. Americans all have names like sort of,
Speaker C:you know, Macaulay Gregory and things, it doesn't make any sense, it's like they have random mixes of surnames. But I think, well, why not though? What I will say is that there is no such thing as a gender-neutral name, because people always think, well, there are names where you could be one or the other, but generally names start out as male names, and then they become female names, and they stop being used by boys. So if you think of names like Stacey and Tracy and Marion, which we think of as distinctively, you know, girly names, were all started out as male names,
Speaker A:but you know, less than 100 years ago. I once met an American girl called Asia, and I wanted to, I want to say, yeah, my name is Western Europe. I never took advantage of that. And also, actually, just to finish this off, she might have thought you're a bit of a dick. I think she may well have done anyway. But yeah, the people I sold my last house to, I took quite a strong dislike to them. I only met them, I only met, actually, it was a couple, I only met the man after we'd, you know, done the deal. And so I met him actually at my old house, and having a sort of general chat, and it turned out, happy news, his partner was pregnant. And I said, oh, great, that's wonderful. Said all the usual things, and you know, is it going to be a boy or a girl? And it's going to be a girl. Did you say them with that level of cynicism?
Speaker B:Maybe that's why you didn't get on.
Speaker A:And so I said, actually, part of the reason why we didn't get on was because the wife insisted that I went around there and clean out the the loft, which hasn't hadn't been done to the degree that she would have wanted. So being a good person, I went back and did that. The house you'd sold to her?
Speaker C:Yeah, and yeah.
Speaker A:She asked you to go and clean out the house that you'd sold, which was now her? It was meant to be an empty house.
Speaker D:What was in the, were the bodies?
Speaker A:Just a couple of dead bodies. Yeah. So anyway, so we kind of went, I went around there. And, you know, we had a little bit of a moan about what a bit of a nightmare his wife was. But anyway, when I found out he was having a girl, I said, okay, great. What's the name going to be? And he said, well, we don't know quite yet. But we do know it's going to be French. And so I said, oh, I see. So your wife's French, is she? And he said, no, no, no, she's not. And I said, oh, her mother's? No. And he said, he said, there's no, there's no sort of French at all in the family. But we've got my wife's family has got this tradition that if it's a girl in the family, we always call her by a French name. Right? So immediately, I just thought, well, first of all, you need, you clearly made a mistake in marrying this woman. She comes from an absurd family. But two, well, that's just so pretentious. But then three, it made me think, well, actually, well, what is an acceptable French girl's name? Because you could call her Mary, for example, right?
Speaker C:Yeah, I think we probably have a lot of names that, you know, in the year 800, would be considered absurd foreign names that are now considered fairly normal.
Speaker A:Yeah. And you could imagine him going through the list going, Marie? No, that's too English. Or Catherine? No. And then going, what about, you know, Claudette? Yes, it could be that. And I don't know, I just, it just, I just felt such a strong intense dislike of him and this woman I never even met. And this newborn baby, who's now about 10 years old, whatever her name may be, Claudette or Nicole, I don't know. Um, look, I don't know where that takes us. But as usual, right now, send me a name. Yeah. Okay. Right, we need to wrap up there. So thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Enduring podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Chris Wragg, Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And until next time, à tout à l'heure.
