What’s in a name?

I wrote Mister Act, a little piece on identity and human nature, about two months after we moved to Cambridge. The most interesting bit for me was how quickly I shifted my habits; I really don’t say anything to parents whose kids call me by my first name. It probably helps that doesn’t happen very often — in my experience so far, most kids don’t call adults anything at all. MIT’s Sandy Pentland came to give a seminar at Lippmann House this week. He said his research on human behavior patterns suggests that people usually do things just to go along with those around them. I seem to fit that — people can have the kids call them what they want to be called. Some of the comments on this piece suggest that it readers didn’t get that point.

I would’ve liked to have talked with a developmental psychologist to see whether any research had been done on the topic, but I didn’t find one in the time I had available to me.