What's in Name?

“What’s in a name?”, Shakespeare had asked famously. In a world of machines, he’d have been right. But of course, we live in a world of humans.

 

Isis was never a common name in the West, but over the last decade or so, as Joe Pinsker writes:

“Parents ran from the name Isis (as an option for their new-borns) when it became connected to terrorism.”

 

But what about people who’ve already been named before the association changes to something else? Take Apple’s voice assistant which is named named Siri. A journalist with the same name, Siri Bulusu, lamented about this phrase she’s heard every time she introduces herself:

“‘OMG, Siri like the iPhone,’ should be engraved on my tombstone.”

 

Fortunately, Siri was never a popular name to begin with. But that’s not true for Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant. Sure, Amazon may have picked the name based on (and shortened from) Alexandria, the library with that huge book collection in ancient times. But as Alexa, the voice assistant, became popular, incidents like this are not all that uncommon:

“One dad asked his daughter Alexa for some water, and their robot Alexa responded by offering to order a case of Fiji water for $27.”

 

As adults, we get a bit more polite. But life for kids named Alexa is hell:

“Particularly the younger ones get teased at school with an onslaught of commands… The only Alexa that many of today's children know is the virtual one that their family bosses around, so it’s not surprising that some of them go on to belittle classmates with the same name.”

 

Amazon has an option, but it doesn’t solve the problem being described in this blog:

“Owners can select a different “wake word” for their device so that they don’t have to say “Alexa” to get its attention, but that doesn’t much alter the name’s associations.”

 

The name stirs up associations. Funny how Shakespeare could have missed that part?!

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