Most clients do not like it when some problems are trying to "pull by the ears" to a request or a situation from adult life. There are two types of reactions – frankly intolerant – "what difference does it make what happened in childhood?" and moderately neutral or condescending "if you dig around, then everyone will have something in the closet...."
The story, which I have told hundreds of times within the technique of reasonable self-disclosure, formed the basis for a large-scale study at the intersection of psychology, linguistics and pedagogy. Imagine a person living, growing up, reacting to stimuli in accordance with his temperament, going through crises. And here an unexpected factor helps (or hinders) him - his last name.
At the age of forty, I once again sat down at the student's bench. Correspondence students come to the university twice a year. I was sitting in a shabby classroom and the mood quickly deteriorated when the teacher went to check the list of those present, the closer she got to my last name, the more my fitness bracelet was torn by warnings, my pulse had already exceeded the critical mark.
For the next six months, before the next session, I thought about what it was, and... I didn't find it. By the time of the next session, I had already sat on different chairs sorting through different decks of macs, but the situation repeated itself. There is another bonus at the university – a cheap canteen. There I thought about heavy artillery – self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis involves the use of sounds that evoke strong emotional associations.
I knew that the so-called trigger was somewhere in the education system, but not the fact that it was higher. The Internet has given me a lot of false directions to dig into – that feminism was sponsored by the CIA so that children would be sent to school earlier and it would be easier for them to brainwash. Having identified one authoritative personal name for me in the array of information, I clicked on the link. Jordan Peterson talked about how in schools the desks were in the same order as the machines at the factory and the sound of the bell was no different from the sound of the end of the shift at the factory. The sound was found.
I remembered everything. The sensations were completely the same. The discovery of sensory neurites (special cells) in the heart explains a lot about our feelings when nothing unpleasant seems to be happening, but the heart remembers an unpleasant event in the past. Hence the abundance of phrases in every language – a heavy burden on the heart, etc.
I was transported back to the day I went to first grade. Uniform and backpack. We were standing in a circle near the school, the bell was also ringing. The teacher also checked those present. My last name was pronounced incorrectly. This was not the fault of the class teacher. My first name was a mixture of incomprehensible sounds, as if a person was doing beatboxing. But everyone got bullied by my mother–the teacher, the children who giggled, and even their parents. But I got the most of it. My father was busy integrating into a new family and my mother decided that she would teach me how to be a man – if you are called Mr. Arsewhoule, will you also stand silently and clap your ears? Nothingness. In the sixth grade, my mother no longer went to the rulers because of alcohol problems and the bullying stopped. At least from her. There was less laughter at the university, but when I signed up for a hairdresser or a car service, I chose a place where I could hear well and pronounced my last name by syllables. In the end, I decided to just change it.
At the current stage of history, adherents of the doctrine of generic programs usually stopped listening or reproached me for changing my surname, I betray my family. After changing my last name and all the documents, I came to the next session – my new last name became higher in the alphabetical list and the painful wait became shorter, moreover, the new last name was always pronounced without mistakes. The bracelet showed a pulse of 60 beats per minute.
After such a successful behavioral experiment, I began to collect a database for research. Initially, I decided to define the term "problematic surname", i.e. the one that causes discomfort to the owner and the criteria of this term from the point of view of different sciences.
Several categories began to emerge. 1. Surnames in which the vowels Kolmogorov and Kolmagor alternate. 2. Foreign surnames in varying degrees of phonetic assimilation in the Russian language are Pfanenstyl and Phonenstil. This surname is clearly read in the original of the native speaker's language. 3. Surnames that were given to display the type of activity or professions – Tokarev, Schneider, etc. It should be noted that in Russian the surname is Oxengirdt/Oxengirt may have negative connotations and may cause discomfort to the owner (according to the results of surveys), for example, Ovtselupov.
Some surnames were initially "not planned" as having negative connotations, for example, Vagina and Farmagey (a variant spelling of Formogey). So are the words. Renovation in the language of the native speaker means simply repair. In our reality, this is an ambiguous process of demolishing a house with the resettlement of residents, which provides for a certain renovation. After some time, I realized that trying to structure surnames and guessing about the degree of discomfort that they can cause to their owners is pointless and decided to focus on opinion polls, which are still ongoing because certain criteria must be met. Learn more about triggers in other articles.