Track 4

Unit one

sociology names

pages six and seven.

Listen for main ideas and listen for details

Good afternoon the focus of today’s introduction to sociology class is names in sociology we study social groups and how people interact and respond to each other how we respond to names is an interesting study.

For example, depending on if I say my name is Alex or Alexandra or Dr. Shaw you might respond differently to me.

Names are a prime example of what we call a cultural universal that means we all have names and we all call each other by names so it’s a practice we all share.

Today’s lecture will be divided into two halves in the first half, you’ll hear about four ways parents choose names in the second half will discuss whether or not our names influence how people respond to us in our daily lives before we go on though.

I want to quickly mention that the scope of my lecture is limited to names from the English language.

However, we would take a similar approach to analyzing how parents choose names in any other language.

So, without a doubt, our names are important symbols of identity, and for some people important enough to change. So let’s look at the four typical ways parents choose first names.

There also called given names because the name is given to the child.

Okay. The first is to rely on custom parents may choose a name in order to pass it down from one generation to the next.

For example, a baby girl is born and the parents decide to call her Sarah, because her grandmother’s name is Sarah for if it’s a boy in some families the first son is named after the father.

So with the father’s name is say Thomas Proctor then the Sun will be Thomas Proctor Junior or Thomas Proctor the second.

I read a funny variation on this in 2004, a new father, John Blake didn’t want to use Junior or the second he was a software engineer so.

So he named his son John Blake version 2.0 talk about a true computer geek.

The second way parents choose names is to name a child after someone the parents and buyers, such as a favorite teacher, family, friend, or even a famous athlete or movie star.

The third way is to choose a name. The parents feel will provide some social benefit to their child.

For example, if they’re concerned about gender discrimination, they may choose a name that works for either a boy or a girl a name like Taylor, for example, or my name Alex.

In fact, my parents told me they thought Alex might give me an advantage when I applied for jobs or if a parent wants people to notice their child, they may choose an unusual name like Denali or sky.

The fourth and most common way parents choose a name is simple is because they like it they like the sound with a feeling it has or to classic name. Now what qualifies as elastic well classic means.

The name never goes out of style. It’s a name that was popular in 1900, 1980 and is still popular today.

Examples of classic boys names are Robert and Michael for girls Emily and Anna are a couple of classic examples to summarize parents choose names either based on custom or after someone they admire or to help their child. Socially, or the most common way because they like it.

Now I want to consider these questions. This is name influence how other people respond to them does a person’s name affect their chances for success in life. A lot of research has been done around these queries.

Specifically, researchers have explored whether it’s better to have a classic name such as Robert or an unusual name like Darvin at this point, sociologist, like myself, don’t agree which is better, we can say for sure we do know, though, that there are stereotypes associated with names.

By this I mean, we hear a name and an image comes to mind. Fair or not this is what happens people get judged by the name they have.

Does anyone doubt that well here’s a convincing example, researchers took a homework assignment and made photocopies on half of the copies they wrote the name Michael on the other half.

They wrote the name Hubert, Hubert by the way, is not a common name in English. Then they asked teachers to grade to the homework. Guess what happened.

The teachers gave Michael hydrates and Hubert much lower grades why it was the same homework wasn’t the researchers concluded that the name Michael had to be the only factor.

It appeared the teachers held a stereotype that a boy named Michael was smarter than a boy named Hubert as a result they gave Michael higher grades. Let’s recap now.

Today’s class we looked at four ways parents choose first names because of customs after someone they admire to help their child socially and the most common because they like the name.

We also looked at research to answer the question does a name matter in your study groups. I’d like you to discuss that question further. Also discuss how you got your names and compare that with the four ways we studied today