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To some extent, yes.
I knew a guy named Randy in grade school, expected the next Randy I met to be similar. He kind of was, maybe the name helps form character.
Aside from that, when I hear the name Donny, I expect an Osmond type.
I don't automatically love or hate someone just based on their name, but it does bring memories and expectations.
Nope! The demeanor of the new person dictates how I feel about them first. If some remembered association crops up later it might have a momentary effect but then it gets squashed as ridiculous.
Maybe on some level, depends... on how they look also? Some people don't seem to fit their face with their name. Sometimes I'll subconsciously assign them a random name, and keep calling them that name because I associate them with certain phonetics. IDK...
I'm bad with names, so unless if someone really sticks out with a unique name and I hear it again, I might have a brief "Aha!" moment, and think of that person with positive attributes, and then I snap back to reality and think, that's great and all...
People do tend to on some level associate their names with their personas..
Suppose you were very fond of someone named Jane. Will this make you more likely to like someone you meet named Jane? Conversely, let's say you really couldn't stand someone named Jim. Will you automatically react negatively upon meeting someone else with that name? Or do you feel no correlation between how you feel about a particular Jane or Jim (or whoever) and anyone else with those same names?
I feel no correlation, however if I met someone who was a horrible person I would not give my child the same name no matter how much I liked it. When I was younger I wanted to name any son I had Damian. Then The Omen came out and that was the end of that.
A little bit, unless I know the people well. For example, there were two Cheryls in school I didn't like. So I don't like the name Cheryl today and it is not a name I would consider giving to a child or pet, etc. But if I meet someone named Cheryl and get to know the person the name would not impact how I feel about the person.
I admit it will give me pause. You can't help an emotion bubbling up. But you can control your reaction to that emotion.
My adult daughter, unbeknownst to her, named her cat the same human name as an old boyfriend of mine, one who was controlling and emotionally abusive. This was from before I met her dad. I cringed at first, now when I say the name it's just the cat. My daughter didn't know about existence of the guy or his name. Well, until my sister told her. Grr.
There's a great scene in the movie Harvey where the psychiatrist asks Elwood P. Dowd about the name of his 6'-3-1/2" invisible pooka:
Dr. Sanderson: Think carefully, Dowd. Didn't you know somebody, sometime, someplace by the name of Harvey? Didn't you ever know anybody by that name?
Elwood P. Dowd: No, no, not one, Doctor. Maybe that's why I always had such hopes for it.
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