What's a Name?

My name is Enzo; short for Vincenzo. It is strong and Italian; I am strong and Italian.

They say there is a lot of science about names and naming. Just as I would suspect: my name is a good fit for me; wouldn't want to be called Bear since I am only 6-1/2#....that would be silly.....

A new study published on Monday suggests that hurricanes with female names are more deadly. They believe part of this lies in the fact that people tend to be more wary/take more precautions from storms with masculine names. Because people unconsciously think a storm with a female name is less dangerous than one with a masculine name, those in its path are less likely to flee, and are therefore more vulnerable to harm.

That result held up even after the researchers accounted for storm strength.

But for strong hurricanes, the more feminine the name - as ranked by volunteers on an 11-point scale - the more people it killed. Behavioral scientist Hazel Markus of Stanford University, who was not involved in the study, called it "very significant" and "proof positive" that gender stereotypes affect behavior even when the male or female isn't a living thing.

The study did not prove why severe hurricanes with female names were deadlier, but hints emerged in lab experiments. In one, the Illinois team gave 346 volunteers no information about a storm except its name, and asked them to predict its intensity. "Omar," "Marco" and the like were judged more severe than "Fay," "Laura," and their sisters. In four additional experiments, volunteers shown a storm's projected path were up to 34 percent more likely to say they would evacuate ahead of male names than female ones on the same path. Reaction to gender-neutral names like Sandy fell in the middle.

When judging a storm's threat, people "appear to be applying their beliefs about how men and women behave," said co-author Sharon Shavitt, a professor of marketing at Illinois. "This makes a female-named hurricane, especially one with a very feminine name such as Belle or Cindy, seem gentler and less violent."
(Sharon Begley, Reuters)

I wonder what my human mom thinks of all this?????? She is definitely more deadly around here than the rest of us. <ssshhhhh....don't tell her I said that.....don't want to lose any future treats>