The fear of saying personal names

ANS 2025, February 22, 2025

The fear of saying personal names by Thomas Ditye (Sigmund Freud University, Austria)

The fear of saying personal names has recently been established under the term alexinomia. Alexinomia is characterized by knowing a name but being unable to say it in everyday communication. The problem is not related to memory or the production of language but is instead rooted in unpleasant emotional responses (i.e. anxiety) preventing affected individuals from saying other people’s names. The behaviour can affect all relationships and occurs in all forms of communication but seems to be strongest in close (i.e. romantic) relationships and in direct verbal communication. Being unable to call others by their name heavily impacts social interaction in many situations and negatively affects the quality of the affected relationships.

Affected individuals can cope with the impairment by making use of compensation strategies helping them to avoid using names. Our research shows that alexinomia is a major burden in those affected and quite common, at least in the German and English speaking world. It is linked to increased levels of social anxiety, attachment-related anxiety and an impaired sense of personal identity. The behaviour might be strongly affected by culture and is likely to be associated with the social mechanisms of name avoidance known from anthropology and socio-onomastics. I will be giving an introduction on this rarely discussed phenomenon and present findings from qualitative and quantitative psychological research on the topic, discussing the main attributes, current research, and future directions of this new field of study across various disciplines.

Biography:

Dr. Thomas Ditye is a psychologist and psychotherapist. He studied at the University of Vienna and University College London. Thomas is now an assistant professor at Sigmund Freud University Vienna. His research interests include topics on consciousness (e.g. sleep and meditation) and clinical psychological topics including addiction and social anxiety.