Baby Names & The Power of Visualization
Not sure if you have been put in a situation where you had to think hard of a good baby name. You may know someone that needed help with baby names. Everyone knows that baby names are usually a touchy subject. You do not want an old fashion name that is complicated nor a name that is too simple where the baby never grows. Some even believe that baby names could affect the future outlook of a person and support or distress their success in certain professions. The other day I heard a female caller to a radio station saying that she saw the most hansom man, Hollywood type figure. As she started talking to him she asked about his name. His name happens to be “Bert” like in Bert and Ernie. She said in her mind “you got to be kidding me… No way.” then ended the conversation peacefully and walked away with no return! So when people say it does not matter what you name the baby – I tend to think that it matters. I would highly advice that you take the time and think of a good name that will not cause social or ideological obstacles in the new person’s life…Why am I writing about this? because I came across the most fascinating baby names tool. It visualizes baby names and provides trends about baby names in the US since the 18th century. This tool is a good example of how information visualization could be utilized. The information that is represented visually through this tool would be cumbersome, if not too hard to comprehend, without it.
The tool is called Baby Voyager – check it out and let me know what you find.
posted by Deima Elnatour at
6:30 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting ....without looking at the site, I assumed that it would show me the 'closest' face for a specific name - in other words, what face would come to mind when a person hears a name like 'Bert'.
That face would be different for people from different social/national backgrounds. For someone like me (or us), it is possible that nothing comes to mind for the name 'Bert', as opposed to an 'American' who would visualize the cartoon character.
Leads me into thinking about an interesting experiment that can be conducted to analyze 'mental images' that correspond to different words used across 'cultures'. For example, a group of people from various background could be asked for 'good' and 'bad' baby names. The judgement would represent the 'mental image' for that cohort.
By
Kaushal, at 9:56 AM
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