Why you mix up your kids’ names (and your dog's name, but not your cat's)

When your mother called your name to ask you do to chores in the house, did she sometimes call you by your sibling’s name first?

If you had multiple siblings, did she sometimes cycle through every single one of your siblings’ names before she got around to yours? Did she sometimes even call out your dog’s name before yours?

A Duke University study published April 22 explains why people are doing that, not only to their children, but also to the rest of their family and close friends.

The study examined 1,700 participants and found the concept they refer to as “misnaming” occurs largely due to similar relationships among the misnamed.

“We find that familiar individuals are often misnamed with the name of another member of the same semantic category; family members are misnamed with another family member’s name and friends are misnamed with another friend’s name,” the study’s says.

Names that sound alike can also contribute to the misnaming phenomenon, but that factor isn’t as signficant as the similar relationships, the study found.

People also commonly mix up the names of family members and the family dog, but not the family cats.

Samantha Deffler, the study’s lead author, told Futurity she was surprised by the consistency of that finding.

“I’ll preface this by saying I have cats and I love them,” Deffler says. “But our study does seem to add to evidence about the special relationship between people and dogs.

“Also, dogs will respond to their names much more than cats, so those names are used more often. Perhaps because of that, the dog’s name seems to become more integrated with people’s conceptions of their families.”

Looks, gender and age did not matter. Siblings of different genders and with large differences in their ages still had their names mixed up by family members.

This story was originally published May 3, 2016 at 9:02 AM with the headline "Why you mix up your kids’ names (and your dog's name, but not your cat's)."