The publication of Richard Krafft-Ebbing’s masterwork Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886 represented a landmark in thinking about human sexuality and the bizarre forms that it can take. In addition to describing different types of sexual expression that the author regarded as “perverse” (usually any form of sex that didn’t lead to procreation), it quickly became one of the most influential books on human sexuality ever written and introduced numerous new terms into common usage. One of these terms was “masochism,” which Krafft-Ebbing defined as the opposite of sadism (which he also coined). While the later is the desire to cause pain and use force, the former is the wish to suffer pain and be subjected to force.  

one person in particular who was less than pleased with the new term was the Austrian author, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Krafft-Ebbing justified naming this new sexual anomaly after the prominent author whom he described as “the poet of Masochism” due to his erotic writings and because of his own eccentric personal life. […]

Venus in Furs, the short novel for which Sacher-Masoch is best known, was published in 1870, and has become an erotic classic in its own right. In this book, the hero Severin asks to be treated as a slave and to be abused by Wanda (the “Venus in furs” of the story). The fact that Sacher-Masoch often acted out these fantasies in real-life with his wives and mistresses was not well-known. […]

It may be a coincidence that his health went into a decline shortly after Psychopathia Sexualis came out but by March of 1895, he was delusional and violent. After attempting to kill his then-wife Hulda, she arranged for him to be discreetly moved to an asylum in Lindheim, Hesse. Although his official obituary states that he died that year, there are claims that Sacher-Masoch lived on as an anonymous asylum inmate and actually died years later.

{ Providentia | Continue reading }

Researchers found that name pronunciation plays a major role in the way people are perceived by colleagues and friends - and that those with more complicated names suffer at work.



The team of American and Australian scientists claim that the easier a person’s name is to say, the better their success in the work place and the more likely they are to get promoted.

{ Marie-Claire | Continue reading | Thanks Tim! }

photo { Pari Dukovic, Backstage at Prada, Milan }

The Tim Geoghegan Club, Where everybody knows your name

The Tavistock Hotel in London was the setting for a historic meeting in 1998. Tim Geoghegan of Brooklyn, USA met Tim Geoghegan of Stroud, England. The two men had corresponded via email prior to meeting face-to-face.

Membership in the Tim Geoghegan Club is limited to individuals with the legal name of Timothy Geoghegan, or individuals who wish to become a Tim Geoghegan.

{ Timgeoghegan.com }

photo { Kate Perers }

A woman who took her partner’s name or a hyphenated name was judged as more caring, more dependent, less intelligent, more emotional, less competent, and less ambitious in comparison with a woman who kept her own name. A woman with her own name, on the other hand, was judged as less caring, more independent, more ambitious, more intelligent, and more competent, which was similar to an unmarried woman living together or a man.

Finally, a job applicant who took her partner’s name, in comparison with one with her own name, was less likely to be hired for a job and her monthly salary was estimated $1,250 lower (calculated to a working life, $500,000).

{ Basic and Applied Social Psychology | Continue reading | via The Jury Room }

Turns out that your name is more influential than you think.

Researchers found that the “speed with which adults acquire items [correlates] to the first letter of their childhood surname.”

This means that when it comes to purchasing goods, people with last names that begin with a letter closer to the end of the alphabet tend to acquire items faster than people with last names that begin with a letter closer to the beginning of the alphabet. They call it the “Last Name Effect,” and hypothesize that it is caused by “childhood ordering structure.”

In their words, “since those late in the alphabet are typically at the end of lines, they compensate by responding quickly to acquisition opportunities.”

{ Why We Reason | Continue reading }

photo { Louis Stettner, Rue des Martyrs, 1951 }

We don’t name babies to honor people any more. (…)


The 2008 election saw the historic election of America’s first black president. As you might expect, this event was commemorated in names. Approximately 60 more babies were named Barack or Obama than the year before. How big a deal was that? Well, it means hero naming for the new president accounted for .00001 percent of babies born, or one in every 71,000. Neither Barack nor Obama ranked among America’s top 2,000 names for boys. In other words, the effect was so trivially small that you would never notice it unless you went searching for it. Recent presidents with more familiar names, like Clinton, fared even worse on the name charts.



Now roll back the clock to the presidential election of 1896. Democrat William Jennings Bryan inspired a dramatic jump in the names Jennings and Bryan. Those jumps accounted for one in every 2,400 babies born  — an effect 30 times bigger than Obama’s. It was enough to rank both names in the top 300 for the year. And in case your American history is a little shaky: Bryan lost the election.


{ The Baby Name Wizard | Continue reading }

photo { Mustafah Abdulaziz }

Ask any Ashkenazi American Jew about his family’s arrival in the United States, and you’re likely to hear a certain story. With minor variations, it goes something like this: “My great-grandfather was called Rogarshevsky, but when he arrived at Ellis Island, the immigration officer couldn’t understand his accent. So he just wrote down ‘Rogers,’ and that became my family’s name.”

Most American Jews accept such stories as fact. The truth, however, is that they’re fiction. Ellis Island, New York City’s historic immigrant-absorption center, processed up to 11,000 immigrants daily between 1892 and 1924. Yet despite this incessant flow of newcomers, the highest standards of professionalism were demanded of those who worked there. All inspectors—many of whom were themselves immigrants, or children of immigrants—were required to know at least two languages; many knew far more, and all at the native-speaker level. Add to that the hundreds of auxiliary interpreters, and together you’ve covered nearly every possible language one might hear at Ellis Island. Yiddish, Russian, and Polish, in this context, were a piece of cake.

{ Azure Online | Continue reading }