On the Nature of Implicit Self-Esteem: The Case of the Name Letter Effect

Abstract

In 1811, Napoleon (whose annies occupied The Netherlands) ruled that all \nDutch citizens should have their family names registered. At the time of \nNapoleon's decree, family names were used only by members of the upper \nclass. Thus, this decidedly unpopular decree forced much of the Dutch populace \nto invent a name for their families. To express their dissatisfaction with \nNapoleon's ruling, some families engaged in a very creative form of rebellion. \nSpecifically, they registered themselves under ridiculous family names. To \nthe likely delight of many of these Dutch families , Napoleon met his Waterloo \nfour years after his highly resented decree (in 1815). Nevertheless, by this \ntime, it had become clear that there were some practical benefits to the French \nsystem of name registration, and this system survived long after Napoleon \nperished. Notably, few families went to the trouble to erase their ridiculous \nfamily names from the official records. Even when it eventually became very \neasy for subsequent generations of Dutch citizens to change their fami ly names, \nmany found that they had become quite attached to ridiculous family names. \nThus, to this day, a substantial number of Dutch families go through life bearing \nsuch dubious surnames as Naaktgeboren, Den Boef, and Poepjes (whose \nrespective English translations are "Born Naked" , "The Crook", and "Little \nPoops").

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 76 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.