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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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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.

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“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.”

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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!”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!”

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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.”

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Jayne Kyra
Community Member
2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

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...

SCamp
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I met an American guy who introduced himself as ‘Krek’. I’m like sorry, I didn’t catch it, he repeats it Krek. I’ve never heard that name, it’s interesting, how do you spell it? C-R-A-I-G. Ohhhh. Since found out that’s how Americans pronounce Craig. Australians pronounce it ‘Krayg’.

LaToya Mack
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Exact same thing happened to me. I met this very handsome man when I was on vacation with my daughter in Costa Rica. For the entire trip for four days I kept calling this man POLE. It wasn’t until he text me when I got home and signed his name Paul that I realize my error and I almost Peed myself laughing.

weatherwitch
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm wondering just what part of England he was from. I cannot think of a single regional English or UK accent where Paul could possibly sound like Pole 🤷‍♀️

Katie Lutesinger
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Reminds me of the Penny Pollard book by Robin Klein in which Penny (an Australian kid) spends an entire overseas bus tour calling a fellow tourist "Barb", only to learn right at the end that the guy's name is BOB and he probably spent all week thinking she was mocking his Texas drawl.

Eddy Hardy
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I had the EXACT same thing happen with my girlfriend's brother. I was like 'What kind of name is Pole....

Lily Langtry
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I live in the US and an English friend of mine was telling us his brother Stuart was coming to visit, and we all thought his brother's name was "Shirt" at first, haha. Us Americans, we struggle sometimes...

JB
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Alas, this kind of hiccup happens “across the pond”. Ex-husband’s name “Mahk”, talking about the same name in North America “Marrrrrrk”. Let the two never be confused 🧐

Jason Manning
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Unfortunately, Amercans have mangled all the English vowel sounds (along with many other parts of the language).

Trophy Husband
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My dad knew someone named Richard from Australia who went by the nickname D**k (which used to be a thing). He came to America and found out that the nickname has a different meaning. Now when Mr and Mrs Head were naming their kid, they had never heard of the phrase that I assume you all have figured out, but when he made it to America and got in a fight with someone at a bar who thought he was being made fun of, he stopped going by D**k!

MorgothBauglir
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If you hear him speak in an English accent, you should be able to tell that Paul is Paul.

Jo Choto
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

English people would pronounce the name Pooohhhhl but the Americans would say Paaaaaaaal. That's the confusion.

Edel Codd
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

FYI, the name 'Paul' is spelt 'Pól' in Irish, and pronounced 'Pole'.

Gingergirl
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A client advised their child’s name is Bin. I repeated Bin? Yes they replied. Looked at the file again…Ben. His name is Ben. Another time a client asked for Lyn, we don’t have a Lyn sorry. Yes you do, she insisted, I spoke to him yesterday. Him? Yes. Ah you mean Len. Yes , Lyn.

Jane W.
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Paul in U.S. is pronounced PAWL.. PAHL. But not an O sound.

Billy Maguire
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Try saying it with an egg in your mouth, without breaking the egg.

YourWorstNightmare
Community Member
2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It was just some confusion over an accent. The name Paul does sound quite like "pole" when said with a British accent. And I do live in England, if you're confused, I live in Suffolk and know many Pauls, and it definitely sounds like this.

Monica
Community Member
2 years ago

This comment has been deleted.

Leeds Lass
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

He might have been a Geordie? (people from a city in the north of England, who have a very strong, sometimes hard to understand accent)

Evan Wills
Community Member
2 years ago

This comment has been deleted.

mulk
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"We are going to a party tonight. Do Pole dance ?" (...)

ZAPanda
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

No dudes. "Paul" is pronounced Pc:l (where c: is the long "o" sound in "north" or "floor"). Americans pronounce AH and AU and AW the same, that's why they pronounce it as "pahl" (paaaahl). Like "daughter" which they say "dahttir". Pole is pronounced more like "pearl" (but one syllable and a "w" after the "ear" part) it's written ƏU: in IPA. A brit, or anyone in the recent british empire, would not confuse "pole" and "paul" because they sound totally different. Pall (as in a cloud cover or cloth cover), rhymes with Paul. However, Paul and Pall does NOT rhyme with Pole. Here is a series of screenshots from my dictionary, note the IPA symbols. aw-sound-6...0bc4e8.jpg aw-sound-623b6850bc4e8.jpg

sasha_k
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's so American, thinking someone's name is something ridiculous rather than accept people pronounce words slightly different than you

Noir
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Except this is other countries thinking American names are ridiculous instead of accepting it.

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