
The Power of Names - giorgiofontana
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/06/psychology-language-power-of-names.html?mobify=0
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mhd
It would be interesting to have some kind of statistical information about
startup names. There's definitely trends, the "missing vowel" is basically Web
2.0's metal umlaut. But while that might appear trendy at one time, it might
almost be a death knell once that style is passé. Coming back to people's
names, probably the equivalent of "upper class names" becoming lower class.

Are we back to "John" and "Michael" company/product names again, or is the
"Aidan" and "Teagan" phase still going strong?

~~~
kijin
The perception of being exotic can also be an advantage, though. Would you
rather buy olive oil from a brand named Granny Smith or Emilia-Romagna? As
another example, Häagen-Dazs was named to "sound Danish" to American
consumers, despite not actually meaning anything in Danish. I think the name
has worked rather well for them.

Exotic product names in the U.S., however, must somehow be Anglicized to make
them easy for American consumers to pronounce and remember. Flickr and Tumblr
are okay, despite the missing vowel, because everyone knows how to read them.
Mazda was smart enough to bastardize their founder's name (Matsuda) before
trying to sell cars in America. But good luck if your company is named Xaro
Xhoan Daxos!

~~~
mrsmartypants
Or if you're Ingvar Kamprad from Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd.

~~~
mhd
Or Adolf Dassler.

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tokenadult
I speak both English and Chinese. I gave my children both English and Chinese
names. It would be a very good idea to try to replicate these preliminary
findings across more languages. We can't assume that English-speaking people
in developed countries are representative of the whole world.

[http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-
story/...](http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-
henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/)

Besides the issue of whether or not the findings fit all of humanity rather
than just people in some cultures, there is also the issue of whether the
findings are even true. A lot of psychologists are discovering that many
reported findings on human psychology are not from studies with adequate
statistical power to show that the findings are genuine. The more astute
psychologists, such as Uri Simonsohn at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton
School of Business,

<http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/>

are alert now about applying statistical tests to published findings to find
out if the findings are really likely given the described experimental
conditions, or are the result of "p-hacking" or undisclosed flexibility in
data collection and analysis or other researcher behavior that obscures truth-
finding.

The author of this brief article has a book coming out, and "is an assistant
professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, with
an affiliated appointment in the N.Y.U. psychology department." I wonder what
he thinks of the work of Simonsohn and Simonsohn's colleagues about testing
research findings that make it into the business journals to find out whether
or not the findings are even true or generalizable to other cultures.

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snowwrestler
Maybe people in the northern hemisphere associate going north with going
uphill because the climatic changes are similar. For instance you can find
plant ecologies at 3,000 feet of elevation in West Virginia that are very
similar to what you would find at sea level in eastern Canada.

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yeonhoyoon
In countries which their language is based in Chinese, there's a whole branch
of theory on how different names affect people's lives. The meaning and sound
of each characters and even how many strokes it take to write each character
are taken into account.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
This is also the case with Hebrew (Jewish) and Gurmukhi (Sikh) names.

Jews believe Hebrew is a Holy Language (loshn-koydesh). All the names of
characters in the Old Testament describe their role in the story. For
instance, my name, ‘shmu-el’ (Samuel) is short for ‘shma Elokim’, which means
’listening to the Word of G-d’. The Biblical character Samuel was a prophet,
hence the name.

Sikhs also believe that their language, Gurmukhi, is a sacred language. It is
believed that uttering sounds in a certain order, and repeating those, has an
effect on your consciousness. This is called Nada Yoga. A Sikh name is chosen
using vedic astrology, and it is descriptive of the challenges you’ll face in
your life. Listening to your name and repeating it often is said to help you
in realizing your destiny.

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kijin
When I was young, my family lived 200 miles north of my grandpa's town.
Whenever grandpa visited us, he insisted that the road north was uphill all
the way. I always knew that it was nonsense. After all, we lived in a coastal
area, whereas grandpa lived inland (and it was definitely _not_ below sea
level), and there are no significant mountain ranges in between, so if
anything the drive north should have been mostly downhill. Only later did I
realize that the perception of driving uphill probably had something to do
with the way most maps are drawn. Grandpa probably did burn more gas on the
road north, though, because he didn't have to haul any gifts on the road
south.

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tlarkworthy
I read things beginning with gl are correlated with light effects e.g.
glisten, glimmer, glitter, gloss, glow.

So I suppose that's why a "glorious day" evokes beaming sun.

~~~
gazrogers
Glum and gloomy rain fell on Gloucester like globs of runny goo in the
gloaming. :-)

~~~
lucb1e
Nice!

Related: Voilá! In view a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicareously as both
victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of
vanity is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this
valerous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to
venquish these venal and virulent vermin venguarding vice and vouchsafing the
violent, vicious and foracious violation of volition! The only virdict is
vengance. A vendetta, held as votive not in vain but for the value and
veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and virtuous. Yet verily
this vichessoice of verbiage veers most verbose. So let me simply add that it
is my very great honor to meet you, and you may call me, V. // Only know it
from hearing, I probably misspelled half the words.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Did you memorize that? If so: wow, you were quite close. The correct text from
‘V for Vendetta’:

“Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim
and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of
vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this
valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to
vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the
violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is
vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and
veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add
that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.”

~~~
lucb1e
If I'm entirely honest, I cheated two words. After seeing "This visage" I
remembered the rest again. But yes, mostly by heart. Loved that part of the
movie (and audiobook) :P

~~~
gohrt
The V comics are full of stuff like that.

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grassclip
Interesting about the north and south discrepancies where they say that
property is more valuable on the north side of town. I was just thinking about
this in terms of how cities are laid out. The two cities I know are Milwaukee
and Chicago and it is pretty obvious that the north sides of each of them are
way more affluant than the south. Any other examples of this or am I off base?

~~~
showerst
DC as well, although there are dozens of historical accidents in how its
borders came to be.

Counter-examples are St. Louis and (I think) Minneapolis.

What about in other climates/non-western cities? Does north/south apply in
Sydney? Beijing?

~~~
tokenadult
_Minneapolis_

Yes, Minneapolis is a correct counterexample. What matters most for house
prices in the Twin Cities is nearness to lakes. North Minneapolis has few
lakes, the highest crime rate in the city (with a murder rate far higher than,
for example, New York City), and blighted public schools. Southwest
Minneapolis (same municipal government and same public school district) is a
desirable neighborhood near lakes with a lot of high-income residents and a
high school that is a feeder school to the Ivy League.

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joeyyang
Speaking of ways in which our language affects the way we define the world
around us, here's a list of Eskimo words for snow names (or rather: lexemes,
in the article): <http://www.princeton.edu/~browning/snow.html>

Some would dispute that there exists a similarly diverse taxonomy of ways to
classify snow in English, but I'd argue those rules are looser and more
subject to interpretation.

Either way, it's really interesting to learn the ways in which the constructs
of our language define the way we see the world. Another example of language
influencing thought is the way gender assignments of words affect perceptions
of their characteristics as masculine, feminine, or neutral.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
’Eskimos Have Hundreds Of Words For Snow, and Other Myths Debunked’ by CPG
Grey:

<http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/10-misconceptions-rundown.html>

I live in the Netherlands, where it rains most of the year. According your
logic, one would expect for the Dutch language to have countless words for
rain. Instead, it has just a few, and less than a desert language like Arabic.

~~~
joeyyang
Sure, I agree that there's some contention over this.

It is interesting, however, if you entertain the fact that because there
exists a separate word for different types of snow, you may perceive it as a
separate entity entirely from another kind of snow rather than a just "snow"
with a different modifier out in front.

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GotAnyMegadeth
I didn't realise Jody was a unisex name

~~~
lucb1e
To me it was the only one of the two that seemed like a normal and unisex
name. But the article is American and I'm from the Netherlands, so I just
don't know all the names like a native would.

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EugeneOZ
Wall of text. Please, write "tl;dr" somebody.

~~~
ColinWright
It's less than 1250 words - is that _really_ a problem?

OK, tl;dr - naming things can change how you think about them.

Oh, and in case you're interested, "War and Peace" is about Russia.

~~~
EugeneOZ
I want to see main idea of article first, then decide if this text worth my
time to read. Sorry, if it's offensive for somebody.

Author of War and Peace was very frustrated about size of that book :)

~~~
gruseom
_Author of War and Peace was very frustrated about size of that book_

I doubt that's true. I seem to recall that Tolstoy had his wife copy it 9
times by hand as he rewrote it.

Also, "wall of text", meaning "something that might take an effort to read",
is not considered bad on HN, though verbosity (which is not the same thing)
is.

Also, the phrases "wall of text" and "TL;DR" are Redditisms that most people
here try to keep HN clear of. Other invasive species from Reddit include:
addressing people as "sir" in comments; introducing something (usually
something distracting) with "obligatory"; and others I can't remember right
now.

There used to be a sign as you crossed the Alberta-BC border asking people to
be careful about inadvertently bringing pine beetles from one province into
the other. I feel like we should have one of those.

~~~
EugeneOZ
Well, it's offtop, but I hate when somebody calls me a liar.

In Wikipedia: "6 декабря 1908 года Толстой записал в дневнике: «Люди любят
меня за те пустяки — „Война и мир“ и т. п., которые им кажутся очень
важными»".

In English: (google translate) December 6, 1908, Tolstoy wrote in his diary:
"People love me for the trivia -" War and Peace "and the like, which they seem
to be very important".

I don't read Reddit at all, so I don't care about their Redditisms.

~~~
gruseom
That quote expresses Tolstoy's frustration not about the size of his novels
but about the importance people attached to them. In his old age Tolstoy
wanted people to focus on moral concerns, not artistic ones. For old Tolstoy,
_War and Peace_ was empty of significance, but certainly not because it was
too long—that would be the last thing he cared about by 1908!

Also, please don't use inflammatory language on HN. "Calls me a liar" is about
the most inflammatory way you could put that. My comment was hardly about you,
and "lie" implies something evil, which is way over the top. I'm merely saying
that one of your points was mistaken.

Is there a word for the opposite of inflammatory language? That's what we're
trying to do on HN, even at the cost—this took me years to figure out—of being
a little more boring.

