Naming a thing is the process of selecting a meaningful label for it. Naming things is intuitive, really; if you have ever owned a dog, you can probably recall the first time you named it. “My first dog name was Bubbles.” Bubbles might be an appropriate name for a dog, but it is not an apt name for a human being. There are many considerations when choosing a name, but the most important is to choose one that is unique and memorable.
Naming is faculty to refer to a particular entity, individual, place, idea, or concept by its appropriate name. To name a human being, you must have access to an internal dictionary, locate the term you are searching for, and then say it aloud. The second phase of the naming procedure involves forming a long-term association with the name. This last phase is typically referred to as socialization or community acceptance.
Research indicates that naming children’s toys, such as blocks and puzzles, generates a wide range of cognitive experiences and associations. Thus, a good strategy for naming would be to match a domain name to an existing concept or theme. For example, the word “dog” can be used to refer to a variety of things, depending on our knowledge of what these words mean. In addition, the cognitive associations formed by adult learners with various types of toys lead them to select toys based on whether they match existing concepts.
Anomic aphasia refers to failure to specify a name that yields the right results in naming an item. For example, the word “dog” has a number of conditions, depending on the listener’s knowledge of what dogs are. It can mean dog, four-legged animal, domesticated animal, or anything else. Individuals who suffer from anomic aphasia have difficulty determining what the word “dog” means and have difficulty forming words to replace it with. This cognitive deficit is most likely to occur when the child has been exposed to a word before that the child is able to form a meaningful association between the word and an imagined state of that item.
Several theories suggest that memory lapses and cognitive failures are responsible for many of the problems children have with naming objects and concepts. One theory postulates that when a child fails to memorize a name, he or she is not accessing the internal dictionary that provides that definition. Other theories suggest that individuals with dementia have trouble remembering names and fail to access the internal representations in the brain uses to help make sense of the world. Anomic aphasia can occur in old friends and relatives who have passed on, but it can also happen at home during games and other activities with an older sibling or friend. When the parent or caretaker gives a child a new toy or older sibling, the child may become frustrated and disappointed when the name the child had hoped for doesn’t exist in the toy’s dictionary.
In today’s culture, the act of naming a baby can become quite complex, even confusing for some. Some parents prefer to give gender-neutral names and others want to be traditional with baby names. There are several options available to those parents who want more simplicity and structure with their baby’s first name or new baby’s name. Parents today rely on baby name websites to find a plethora of unique baby names, celebrity names, and traditional place-names. Many new parents turn to these baby name databases after hearing the cute names of some of their favorite celebrities.