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Comment by Kluny | Hacker News Reader

How is it possible for anyone who knows who Aaron is to not know that he's dead? How could they possibly mistake his brother for him to the extent of thoughtlessly calling him the wrong name?

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It is very common (especially as you get older) to mix up names for people that are in the same mental category while you are speaking. It isn't necessarily thoughtlessness. Sometimes our brains just don't work quite right.

... as ANY parent with more that 1 child can attest to ;)

Though it's not limited to children. I'm thinking of assuming officially my uncles first name as one of my midnames, given half the family calls me with that.

My parents and several schoolteachers often called me by my older brother's name, or called my sisters by one anothers' names. It's not as though my parents couldn't tell their own children apart, it's just that sometimes saying a name is an autopilot thing.

I recently took a friend to the grocery store, and called her son by my son's name when I wanted him to move out of the way of someone else's cart.

I often call my own kids by the wrong names, and they look nothing alike and one is half as hold as the other. I also tell them to wash their teeth and brush their hands on occasion, too. Frequency of these kinds of brain mistakes seem to correlate with stress or how much in a hurry I am.

yup. I have four kids, two sisters and a partner.

Sometimes I need to work through ALL the names to get to the right one..

pap...hil...sam...ji...joan..KIM could you please....

Haha, we have the same in our house sometimes! I think I've even heard the dog's name thrown in there.

Eventually you narrow it down to the right kid, right name :)

My mother frequently has to cycle through my brothers/my fathers name before getting to mine.

Its the times when she starts using the cats name I get a little miffed.

WHOA. I just wrote almost the same comment before seeing yours:

> My mother is known for cycling through names before hitting the right one.

> I was frequently addressed as "Hershey-Chris-Patrick" while living at home.

My parents will start with my brother's name first before getting to me, but I've also heard them make the same, inverse mistake with my brother. I have to imagine this is only a same-sex issue right? No one mixes up their daughter and son's names?

My mother occasionally uses the cat's name. The cat's name! We're both male, but still

Nope, my grandma would cycle through random children and grandchildren of either gender before she'd get to me. I always thought this was unique until I read these comments today.

No, it happens with my parents. My sister and I are many years apart though, and once I went to college there was only one kid in the house, so I can kinda understand.

sheepish I do, but not often, and usually only when I'm trying to get them each to do things like clean up a room or fold laundry, or do X/Y/Z before dinner. Even as I say it I notice it, and wonder where the heck that came from.

> It is very common (especially as you get older) to mix up names for people that are in the same mental category while you are speaking

Exactly this. My mother calls me by my dead brother's name all the time. I'm pretty sure if anyone was aware of his death, she would be (given she was with him at the time).

Indeed. "Wives and long-term girlfriends" is a large category for me. It's easy to keep major events straight. But often, I'll be talking about some film that I've seen, and can't remember which of them I saw it with. Or who I did what with on which trip to Amsterdam. It doesn't help that some of their names are similar.

They haven't literally forgotten that Aaron is dead. It's just that they're so strongly interested in Noah as a sort of window to Aaron that their subconscious overwrites Noah's name with the person they're actually interested in.

It probably doesn't help that he looks a lot like Aaron.

I know several people who have for years seen me and thought I was my older brother even though tbh I probably only look about 60, maybe 70% similar, if that.

I can imagine people just not letting it click and continuing to make that mistake.

This is what I was wondering too. I'm terrible with names, but I literally can't imagine that kind of mixup. Not that I doubt anything Noah wrote; I just don't get it.

I think people, maybe even Noah included, are reading a bit too much into what seems to be a simple case of crossed wires, or neurons, in this case.

Just this weekend I called my cousin, whom I've been close friends with for over a decade, by his brother's name. It was the first time I've seen him in about a year but we've been very close for very long. I was thinking about his brother in the moment I meant to use his name and it just came out. There was no thought.

I like the article. It's important to talk about this sort of thing. But the comments here... Please consider they are essentially casting judgement on people for not actively thinking to themselves, "Call them X, call them X..." in the moment X should come out of their mouths. What human actually does that in the normal course of verbal communication? Why are we expecting people to do such a thing?

It doesn't sound like Noah's reading too much into crossed wires.

He's just expressing how it's hard on him when people do get their wires crossed.

There are two guys at work that look nothing like each other but get their names mixed up all the time. I have worked with them for a few years. But because they are Asian, someone accidentally called them by the opposite name, and it became a running joke ever since then. But ever since then, the accidental switching of their names has increased. Even I have to stop and think about it for a second, and I never had that problem until they started joking about it. Psychology is a really weird thing.

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