Why do you constantly confuse your children's names? 2026

María,Lucía, I mean Juan! And your children or grandchildren have been left speechless when they see the mental lapse you just had. And the thing is, who hasn't it happened to? Parents, grandparents...have tried to say the name of their child or grandchild and have said all of them except the one they wanted.

The most recurring phrase when faced with this mess of names is to say: “My goodness, where is my head…!” And no, it is not a matter of us being overwhelmed, stressed or with our minds somewhere else. The reason this happens is because of labels that our brain creates when trying to categorize things.

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The Duke University study says that we confuse the names of our children, basically, because in our subconscious children are categorized as “family”, so we can change the name of all those that we have categorized within this label.

In fact, it happens even if we have pets, which indicates that we have them categorized within this label we call family.

Furthermore, it usually happens, especially, if the names are similar or start with the same letter: Sandra and Marta, which both take the same vowel and have the same number of syllables.

It is, therefore, about belonging to the same social group, that feeling of belonging that we all feel in a group, be it friends, work, family, etc. Therefore, it is easier to confuse names within the labels, that is, we will use the name of our family group for another family member; The same thing happens with the group of friends.

Likewise, the study points out that what we usually confuse are proper and non-common names, that is, the names of people or places are the ones we normally make mistakes in.

"I have it on the tip of my tongue"

On the other hand, there is also talk of the famous phrase “I have it on the tip of my tongue” which refers to when you want to say a word, however, you don't remember it.

The same thing can happen with names: you are about to remember that someone's name, but you are not able to. This process is similar to confusing the names, in this case, of our children.

What happens is that you try to remember a name or a thing and you can't do it; Then, you get a similar one that is not correct; Finally, the brain stays with that word, blocking you from remembering the one you really wanted to say.

The difference between having “a word on the tip of your tongue” and confusing your children's name is that, with the first, it takes you time to remember the right word and, with the second, the error is corrected instantly.

So now that you know the reason, don't think that you are crazy, but that there is a scientific explanation for calling your children by all the names you can think of, except theirs.

Source: All my children: The roles of semantic category and phonetic similarity in the misnaming of familiar individuals.