Nowadays in Japan, many people are embroiled in controversies regarding naming children. Naming norms, the backbone of these controversies, have great meaning in social sciences. However, only a few researchers have shown interest in this theme, especially in terms of empirical analysis. Therefore, we tried to construct a sociological theoretical framework for naming norms and conducted an empirical analysis corresponding to the framework. We classified popular opinions on naming into several types of naming norms using social research data and sociometric methodology. Moreover, we explored the overt and latent factors that influence the decision processes in each type.
The theoretical insights are as follows: Sociological research on the name itself promotes a theoretical framework using the concept of (social) taste. Incorporating the theory of social taste with Lévi-Strauss’s theory of classifi cation and its applied versions, we can appropriately discuss the matter of naming norms. When naming a child, people assimilate the naming system belonging to their original social sub-group. At the same time, people plan to differentiate their child’s name from that of other people's inside the group. The naming system of each group comprises three elements: naming culture, naming norm, and naming legislation. Parents choose their children’s names based on the intersection of these three elements.
The results and interpretation of the empirical analysis are as follows. For the fi rst analysis, we used seven question items and performed a latent class analysis (LCA) to classify naming norms. As a result, four classes emerged, namely “the middle,” “middle-conservatism,” “conservatism,” and “liberalism.” However, in some respects, the liberalism class was similar to the conservatism class, rather than the middle. We found that an opposing axis anticipating agreement of choice for himself/herself and others versus distinguishing each choice worked as well as an opposing axis such as maintenance versus innovation.
In the second analysis, we investigated the reasons people prefer the naming norm class they belong to by using multinomial logistic structure equation modeling (SEM). We found that the classes of naming norms that people belong to are influenced by their socio-economic position, age, gender, internalized cultural capital, and general social norm.
Considering this theoretical argument and the results of the empirical analyses, we infer that each sub-group has its own naming norms.
