Parents influenced by evolution when naming children

[cronus]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 46571.html

Parents influenced by evolutionary tendency when naming children

Parents' choice of baby names is influenced by an evolutionary tendency to make boys sound large and girls sound small, thus improving their chances of procreating, scientists have claimed.

Popular boys' names - like Thomas, Oliver and Jack - are far more likely to contain broad vowels that we associate with largeness, while common names for girls - like Emily, Olivia and Sophie - tend to be smaller-sounding by comparison, researchers said.

The study, carried out by psychologists and an anthropologist at Queen Mary, University of London, drew on previous research which found that people have a strong sense of “sound symbolism” - associating different vowel sounds with different sizes and shapes - because our brains are hardwired to associate low frequency noises with large, dominant or threatening people or animals, while high frequency sounds are connected with smaller vocalisers.

Parents might be unconsciously choosing names that, from an evolutionary perspective, would “boost their son or daughter's success in life by increasing the chance of passing on their genes”, scientists said.

“In general, western societies tend to think of relatively taller men as more masculine and more successful with the opposite sex whereas shorter, slimmer women are perceived as having attractive feminine qualities,” said Dr Benjamin Pitcher, from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences. “It seems that over time the English language has developed a preference for names that reflect our society's attitudes of what we deem to be attractive qualities in different sexes.”

(continued, sounds like astrology to me?)

[Animavore]

No...





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shit.

[rainbow]

The great advantage of this research is that it keeps these nutters off the streets and mugging little old ladies.

[JimC]

My first son, David, named after my best mate at school...

My second, Nicholas, named by my wife, who fancied Nicola as a name for a daughter...

So, fuck off, weird sociologists...

[Audley Strange]

Absolute nonsense, pure conjecture and at complete odds with reality. Naming conventions based on who the monkeys venerate at any given time. Let's face it the name "James" cannot be said without something akin to being camp and it has no hard consonants, and we've had a bunch of Kings called that. Just fucking nonsense.

Can I just say that the report above and others I've read from the charlatanry of socio-commenters implies something real, but they have it ass backwards and are reducing intellectual rigour to "It's all done by evil wizard magic".

Wankers, stupid fucking wankers when it comes to this kind of pedagogry, Pol Pot had the right idea. Purveyors of mental toxins.

[mistermack]

To think that people trained as scientists, just to produce this pathetic, imaginary, wrong, ludicrous theory.

What a waste of talent. They should have gone in for climate science.

[Azathoth]

psychologists != scientists

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...“In general, western societies tend to think of relatively taller men as more masculine and more successful with the opposite sex...” ...

If only...