WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Broadcast starting week of May 10, 2006

This week on The Infinite Mind, host Dr. Peter Kramer explores the psychology and history of names, and how they shape our identity.  We take a closer look at the curious coincidence of people whose names match their profession, and we speak with film makers Alan Berliner and Grace Lee, who both made documentaries charting their quest for the people who share their name.  We analyze how products like IPod and Viagra were named with Steve Manning, managing director of Igor, a "naming company."  William Bright, a linguist and anthropologist specializing in place names, tells us how places like Boring, Oregon and Intercourse, Pennsylvania got their names. And commentator John Hockenberry explains why names will never hurt him.

Host Dr. Peter Kramer begins with an essay telling the story of his own name. He describes the odd connection between his name, a false story associated with author Erich Marie Remarque and the Nazi regime. Next up, The Infinite Mind’s Jennifer Ehrlich explores the phenomena New Science magazine calls “nominative determinism,” or people who end up following their names into business.  We’ll hear the stories of four people with names that match, or comment, on their profession and how it’s influenced their lives. Lewis Lipsitt, a Brown University psychology professor, explains his theory about how it may be no coincidence at all if your name is linked with your job.

We delve into the wild world of names with an interview with Cleveland Kent Evans, co-author of the "Ultimate Baby Name Book" and a psychology professor at Bellevue University in Nebraska, who studies trends in naming. Evans explains how your name affects your development as a child, and what it reveals about your parents’ aspirations and ethnic roots.  He discusses the current trend towards inventing new names, which he says reflects parent’s desire to help their child stand out as an individual in today’s franchise-oriented society.  Evans also tracks the most popular names and how different American ethnic groups vary in how they name their children based on the cultural priorities and socioeconomic differences.  We also hear from several The Infinite Mind listeners who discuss the origins of their names with Kramer and Evans. 

Next we take a closer look at how your name affects your identity, through the lens of two filmmakers as Peter Kramer interviews Alan Berliner and Grace Lee.

In his 2001 film, "The Sweetest Sound," Alan Berliner explored how his name affected his identity. He tracked the lives of other men who share his name.  And he invited them all to dinner to see what else they might have in common. In the film, Alan Berliner explored his relationship with his name growing up, and the unique bond he felt with the other Alan Berliners who responded to his invitation.

Grace Lee’s film, "The Grace Lee Project" was as much an exploration of Asian-American female identity as it was about her own relationship with her name. Grace Lee feels her name is its own stereotype - the image of a perfect, quiet, dutiful Asian-American woman. In her film,  she pursued other Grace Lees to find out if they challenged expectations. She built a statistically average Grace Lee. But in the course of the film she interviewed a Grace Lee who became a black power activist, a Grace Lee who is an evangelical Christian leader and Grace Lee in Korea who became a lesbian activist, and then retreated from her cause under societal pressure.

Then, we explore the psychological messages in the names of the products we buy. The Infinite Mind’s Jennifer Chu speaks with Steve Manning, managing director of Igor, the San Francisco-based naming company. Manning dissects the popular company names such as Yahoo and Virgin Airlines and explains how naming a company has become a mixture of trend forecasting and psychology. Manning also explains that since pharmaceutical companies started marketing their drugs to consumers, rather than solely to doctors, the names of products have become more evocative and influential.

To delve into names of places, Dr. Kramer interviews William Bright, professor emeritus of linguistics and anthropology at UCLA.  He spent his career researching the origins and etymologies of places names throughout the country and has written such definitive reference books as "Native American Place Names of the United States."  Bright explains that America’s place names reflect the country’s history, from the pilgrims that named everything after England to names that were a mixture of French, Spanish and Native American languages.  He explains how unusual place names such as Boring, Oregon and Intercourse, Pennsylvania got their names.   

We conclude with program with our commentator, who explains why names will never hurt him – even though his name is John Hockenberry.

Heard this week on The Infinite Mind:

 

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