The Cognitive Psychology of Proper Names

Serge Bredart, Tim Brennen, Tim Valentine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780415135467
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134779550
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

It's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember her name." Lots of people have difficulty remembering people's names, even though they can easily recall other information about the person. As memory and retrieval processes are central to cognitive psychology and neuropsychology the study of proper names makes a fascinating and practical focus of study. Using an information processing approach, Valentine, Brennen and Bredart consider evidence from speech production, face recognition and word recognition to develop a new functional model of the production and recognition of people's names. This book will be valuable to all those studying cognitive psychology, cognitive neuropsychology and linguistics. It makes a suitalbe text for higher level undergraduates and postgraduates and those engaged in research.

Chapter 1
Approaches to proper names

Proper names, particularly the act of naming, is a well-established research topic in disciplines as diverse as anthropology, history, law, linguistics, philosophy, social psychology and sociology. There is even a series of International Congresses of Onomastic Sciences where researchers from various disciplines meet to discuss their work on proper names. For instance, the XVIIIth International Congress (held in April 1993 at the University of Trier, Germany) was mainly devoted to the study of one category of proper names: family names. The programme of this congress mentions no less than ten different colloquia which were scheduled to provide a panorama of the current trends in research on proper names. These colloquia dealt with topics like the interdependence of naming and social structure in various cultures (socio-onomastics); intercultural comparison of proper name systems; the relations between cultural history and the choice of a name; the poetics of name-giving or the logical status of literary names (literary onomastics); proper names, and lexicography, legal aspects of naming, or ‘deonomastics’, i.e. the study of words which have been formed on the basis of proper names (for instance, the French word ‘poubelle’ (dustbin) is derived from the name of Eugène René Poubelle, a prefect who ordered the use of dustbins in 1884).

There was no colloquium devoted to the cognitive approach to proper names during this meeting. The reason is surely that cognitive psychologists’ interest in proper names is very recent. In this introductory chapter, we will briefly present questions that were discussed in some of the aforementioned disciplines. We have deliberately chosen not to report work on the etymology of proper names since this kind of work is probably known to various extent by most people. Dictionaries of proper names providing the etymology of family names and place names are available in all good bookshops. Rather, we have chosen to present work that is less well known to cognitive psychologists, namely the judicial, anthropological, socio-psychological and philosophical approaches to proper names. We do not claim to present an extensive, or even a representative, review of this enormous literature. Our aim is to show the diversity of the literature on proper names outside cognitive science. We will show later in the book how some of this research, particularly work by philosophers of language, may provide intuitions for cognitive psychologists. After this overview, we will describe the topics that a cognitive approach to proper names deals with.

First of all, we will define what will be taken as a proper name in this book.

WHAT IS A PROPER NAME?

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1976) defined a proper noun (or proper name) as ‘a noun that designates a particular being or thing, does not take a limiting modifier, and is usually capitalised in English’. The famous French Grand dictionnaire encyclopédique Larousse (1984) defined a proper noun as a sub-category of nouns, that designate a being or an object considered as unique. These two definitions constitute fair summaries of the way linguists define proper names. Let us consider some definitions of ‘proper name’ from dictionaries of linguistics or grammar:

• ‘The name of an individual person, place or object, as opposed to a common noun which refers to any one of all things denoted by the noun. Thus, John, Eiffel Tower, The Tyrol, London are proper nouns…. In English, proper nouns are usually written with an initial capital letter’ (Hartmann and Stork, 1972).
• ‘The name of an individual, place, etc. …Proper nouns cannot be used with determiners in the way common nouns can’ (Crystal, 1980).
• ‘Proper nouns are basically names of specific people (Shakespeare), places (Milwaukee), months (September), days (Thursday), festivals (Christmas), magazines (Vogue) and so forth. Proper nouns do not generally share the formal characteristics of common nouns. In particular they lack articles, or rather article contrast…. Proper nouns generally have unique denotation, and are usually written with initial capital letters’ (Quirk et al., 1985).
• ‘The proper name has no real meaning, no definition; it is not linked to what it designates by a semantic link but by a particular convention. …Proper names have an initial capital letter, they lack number contrast and are often used without determiner’ (our translation from Goose, 1986).

Most of these definitions share a number of features:

1. A proper name designates a particular being or thing. Typically, authors cite names of persons and names of places as examples of proper names.
2. Proper names have a capital initial letter.
3. Proper names are not used with determiners in the same way as common names are (see also Dubois et al., 1973; Allerton, 1990).

However, each of these features deserves more comment. Note that while the expressions ‘proper noun’ and ‘proper name’ are generally used as alternative terms, some authors do draw a distinction between these two expressions (see for instance Quirk et al., 1985). A proper noun is then seen as a single word while a proper name may consist of more than one word (e.g. Oxford Road, Good Friday); proper names normally function as a single unit with respect to grammar. Following this distinction will not be necessary for our purpose.

Names of people and names of places are the most typically cited kinds of proper names. Names of people include family names, first names, pseudonyms and nicknames, while names of places include names of cities, villages, monuments, districts, countries, islands, mountains, rivers, seas and stars (Goose, 1986). But linguists have identified other kinds of proper names: for instance, temporal names, animal names and titles. In English, temporal proper names include names of festivals and religious periods (Christmas, Ramadan, Easter, Independence Day), names of months (January, February…) and days (Monday, Tuesday …). Animals may also receive a proper name (e.g. Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great). Some objects like ships commonly receive a proper name (Jules Verne gave the name ‘Nautilus’ to a famous sub-marine). Some people give a proper name to their computer. Goose (1986) also noted that a set of meaningful words can become a proper name when it is used to designate a particular entity. This is the case with titles of books or musical pieces.

Proper names are written with a capital initial letter. This property does not perfectly distinguish proper nouns from common nouns, since not all nouns beginning with a capital letter are proper nouns. For instance, in English, ethnic or national adjectives (African, Canadian) are written with a capital initial letter but they are not proper names (see Quirk et al, 1985).

Finally, authors agree that determiners and number contrast are not used in the same way with proper nouns and common nouns. But this does not mean that proper names always lack number contrast, and that proper names are always used without determiners. According to Quirk et al., proper names normally lack number contrast. Proper names are singular and do not have a plural, or they have a plural but no singular (e.g. the Netherlands, the Pyrenees). In some circumstances, proper names may be made plural. By saying the ‘John Smiths’ one may designate people who bear a high frequency name like ‘John Smith’. But in such a case the ‘John Smiths’ is no longer a proper name since it denotes a category and not a particular entity. However, other cases are less obvious. A surname can also be made plural to refer to members of a family. For instance, ‘the Fondas’ can be used to designate the family called ‘Fonda’. It is not easy to decide whether the ‘the Fondas’ denote a particular entity or not. In some sense it does: it designates a particular family; but this family is composed of a number of individuals sharing properties (Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda and Bridget Fonda). The question of whether the proper noun has to be reclassified as a common noun is not easy to answer in such cases.

In English, personal names and temporal names have no article. But several kinds of proper names are preceded by the definite article. Classes of proper names typically preceded by ‘the’ are plural proper names in general (the Netherlands), and more particularly groups of islands (the Bahamas, the Shetlands) and ranges of mountains (the Himalayas, the Alps). Names of rivers (the Danube), seas (the Atlantic, the Baltic), canals (the Suez Canal) and other geographical features of coastline (the Gulf of Mexico, the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of Wight) are also preceded by the definite article. It is also the case for names of public institutions (museums, libraries or hospitals); hotels, restaurants, theatres or cinemas; ships (the Titanic), or famous aeroplanes (the Spirit of St Louis). However, Quirk et al. (1985) argued that proper names, unless they are reclassified as common names, lack article contrast. This means that the article preceding the proper name cannot be varied to give expressions like ‘a Nether land’ or ‘some Netherlands’. In contrast, proper names, when reclassified as common names, may have their meaning modified by determiners. For instance, ‘an Einstein’ can mean ‘somebody as clever as Albert Einstein’, or ‘the French Bob Dylan’ means ‘a French singer whose songs sound like those by Bob Dylan’ (see Clark and Gerrig (1983) for an investigation of how people understand proper nouns when they are preceded by an article). For further information on the grammar of proper names the reader may refer to Quirk et al.’s (1985) comprehensive discussion of the problem which we have briefly summarised here.

What will be considered to be a proper name in this book? Following linguists’ definitions we will take proper names as names of unique beings or things. These include:

• personal names (surnames, first names, nicknames and pseudonyms);
• geographical names (names of cities, countries, islands, lakes, mountains, rivers and so forth);
• names of unique objects (monuments, buildings, ships or any other unique object, e.g. Excalibur—the sword);
• names of unique animals (e.g. Benji or Bugs Bunny);
• names of institutions and facilities (cinemas, hospitals, hotels, libraries, museums or restaurants);
• names of newspapers and magazines;
• titles of books, musical pieces, paintings or sculptures;
• names of single events (e.g. Kristallnacht).

Temporal names like names of days of the week, months or recurrent festive days will not be seen as true proper names. The fact that there is one Monday each week, one month of June and one Good Friday each year suggests that ‘Monday’, ‘June’ and ‘Good Friday’ do not really designate unique temporal events but rather categories of events, and therefore are not true proper names. This contrasts with the ‘Kristallnacht’ which refers to one unique event that happened on 9 November 1938. In agreement with this, note that, in French, names of the days of the week and names of months are not considered proper names and are not capitalised.

Some authors take brand names as proper names (e.g. Cohen and Faulkner, 1986). Although brand names are generally capitalised, they are an unclear case of pure proper names because they do not designate a unique object. It could be argued that in fact a brand name designates a unique object that is simply replicated in a number of identical exemplars. This can be the case, for instance, of drugs (Perdolan, Haldol) or beers (Orval, Jupiler) where each exemplar designated by the label is a perfect clone. But this is not true of all brand names. For example, we know a lot of different cars called ‘Volkswagen’ or even ‘Golf’ and the different exemplars of Golf we know are not pure clones. They differ from each other in colour, power of the engine, year of the model and so on. In fact, brand names like ‘Golf’ and ‘Volkswagen’ designate categories of objects rather than unique objects. The use of brand names, and the entities to which they refer, is extremely diverse. Therefore, it is difficult to place the category of ‘brand names’ definitively within any taxonomy of proper names. However, at least some brand names do appear to share the properties of proper names and therefore brand names are included in some of the topics discussed in this book.

Finally, if denotation of unique entities is the key criterion, this criterion would lead one to not consider a surname as being a proper name if this name designates two (or more) individuals. The proper name ‘Moore’ is shared by many people (Roger Moore, Dudley Moore, Demi Moore, Viviene Moore, etc.) but it is not a label for a particular category of individuals called ‘Moore’.

PROPER NAMES AND LAW

Human rights

The right to a name is one of the most basic rights of human beings. The right to a name is not written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948. However, this right is mentioned in one of the international pacts that were elaborated to provide the Declaration with mandatory judicial power. Article 24–2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which was adopted in 1966 states that ‘Every child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have a name.’

The Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations (20 November 1959), stated the right to a name in Principle 3. More recently, the right to a name has been clearly stated in Article 7–1 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 20 November 1989:

The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and to be cared for by his or her parents.

The background note n°2 of the Convention recalls that

The simple act of registering births and deaths, and giving a child a name and a nationality, is taken for granted in most places today. However, some developing nations still do not keep written records, and furthermore, children of indigenous or migrant populations as well as refugees and internally displaced groups are not always properly registered. Sometimes, children are even treated as possessions or commodities to be bargained with or traded. In its more extreme forms, the denial of an identity to children has led to slavery, prostitution, discrimination against ethnic minorities, and forced separation from parents.

Finally, the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights (adopted on 22 November 1969) explicitly mentions the right to a name in Article 18 which states that everyone has the right to a first name and to the names of both parents, or to the name of one of them.

Attribution and protection of names

Specialists of comparative law have shown that the rules for the attribution of a patronym vary considerably from one country to the other. The following three systems of patronym attribution are commonly used in western countries:

1. The name of the husband is attributed to his wife and to his children.
2. Spouses bear a double name (the husband’s name followed by the wife’s name or vice versa) which is transmitted to children. This is the case in Spain and in Portugal.
3. At marriage, spouses choose a family name that they will bear and transmit to their children. In Germany, this name may be either the husband’s name or the wife’s name, or both.

However, lawyers observe an evolution of laws ruling the attribution of patronyms. In the United States, for instance, according to the traditional Common Law, a child receives his or her father’s name and a married woman receives her husband’s name. But in some states like Florida or Hawaii, parents may attribute to their child a name which is neither the father’s name nor the mother’s name. In Florida, parents may choose to use, for instance, the three first letters of the mother’s name and the three last of the father’s name to compose a new name for their child. In Hawaii, parents may even give their child a name which is completely different from their own names (Boucaud, 1990). In North Carolina, Tennessee or Virginia the Common Law is no longer used as far as the attribution of the married woman’s name is concerned. A woman may choose to keep her own name instead of taking her husband’s name. Complicated judicial problems may arise when spouses who originate from countries which do not apply the same law for the attribution of personal names do not agree on the family name to be given to a child.

Another kind of problem that lawyers have to face concerns the attribution of first names. Children must sometimes be protected against facetious parents who choose names that lead easily to mockery. Rubellin-Devichi (1990) reported the following example. Mr and Mrs Vaissel had chosen the first name ‘Aude’ for their daughter. ‘Aude’ is certainly a beautiful first name, but in French ‘Aude Vaissel’ is pronounced in the same way as ‘eau de vaisselle’ (dishwater).

Another kind of problem that lawyers have to face concerns the attribution of first names. Children must sometimes be protected against facetious parents who choose names that lead easily to mockery. Rubellin-Devichi (1990) reported the following example. Mr and Mrs Vaissel had chosen the first name ‘Aude’ for their daughter. ‘Aude’ is certainly a beautiful first name, but in French ‘Aude Vaissel’ is pronounced in the same way as ‘eau de vaisselle’ (dishwater).

Apart from the attribution of names, lawyers are also concerned with the protection of names. Names are not protected in all countries. For instance, in the United Kingdom names are not protected so that a British person may not initiate a prosecution if his or her name has been usurped. However, in all other countries belonging to the Council of Europe the protection of names is a judicial matter. In all of these countries the protection of personal names is relatively efficient if a name is usurped for commercial purposes. For instance, in the ex-Federal Republic of Germany, Douglas Fairbanks has been protected against the use of his name as a brand name for cigarettes. The motivation for instituting a prosecution is sometimes less obvious. For instance, in Liège (Belgium), two people restored an old family mansion. From this house, they made a small hotel in which each room is decorated to recall one novel by Simenon (the famous Liège-born author of detective stories). This hotel was named ‘Hôtel Simenon’. Simenon’s heirs swiftly issued a writ against the owners of the ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER 1: APPROACHES TO PROPER NAMES
• CHAPTER 2: COGNITIVE PROPERTIES OF PROPER NAMES
• CHAPTER 3: COGNITIVE MODELS OF FAMILIAR FACE RECOGNITION AND NAMING
• CHAPTER 4: THE RECOGNITION OF PROPER NAMES
• CHAPTER 5: THE RETRIEVAL OF PROPER NAMES AND COMMON NAMES
• CHAPTER 6: LEXICAL ACCESS IN THE PRODUCTION OF PROPER NAMES
• CHAPTER 7: COMPARISONS BETWEEN LEXICAL ACCESS FOR PROPER NAMES AND COMMON NAMES
• CHAPTER 8: INTEGRATING THE ISSUES: A FRAMEWORK FOR NAME, FACE, WORD AND OBJECT RECOGNITION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY