(Moreover, misnaming does not appear to be an indicator of aging or of the cognitive decline typically associated with Alzheimer’s disease.)
Our results confirmed that these errors are common and committed by people of all ages. We then asked what names were incorrectly used and the relationship between the people-or animals-involved. In our study (paywall) published last October in the journal Memory and Cognition, we asked over 1,700 people whether they had ever been misnamed or if they had ever committed a misnaming. The phenomenon of a person inadvertently calling someone familiar by the wrong name is known as misnaming.
