Weird coincidences...

[bassybill]

What do you generally make of them?

A drummer friend of mine was teaching a student, Callum, yesterday and accidentally called him "Brandon", twice. The lad looked a bit shocked and told my pal that he had actually had a twin brother of that name who had died when he was just six months old.

My poor drummer pal has been really freaked out by this. But I'm not, in any way at all. What do you guys think?

[bwv1013]

i think everyone is uniquely receptive to different energies, and most of us go about life not being "tuned in" to them. maybe he picked something up subconsciously. i'm admittedly a bit of a mystic but it's an intriguing possibility...

[Mike M.]

There's so much "out there" that we can't begin to comprehend. Sounds like your friend was contacted by "Brandon" without knowing it.

[electracoyote]

Originally Posted by bassybill

What do you generally make of them?

A drummer friend of mine was teaching a student, Callum, yesterday and accidentally called him "Brandon", twice. The lad looked a bit shocked and told my pal that he had actually had a twin brother of that name who had died when he was just six months old.

My poor drummer pal has been really freaked out by this. But I'm not, in any way at all. What do you guys think?

I'm really freaked out by this.

[bassybill]

Interesting responses. I'll let the discussion continue for a bit then add what I posted on my friend's Facebook story about this. For the moment I'll just go on record as saying that I'm certain that supernatural explanations involving "energies" or "contact" are completely unnecessary for understanding what happened.

[Munjibunga]

I'm not into superstition. It's a cool coincidence. I like them. One day I was driving on the freeway and a Corvette passed me exactly when a Corvette commercial came on the radio.

A recent favorite of mine was when my trio was playing a gig at a large-ish coffee shop. I was moving a few things out of the way on the stage, including a small podium. Being nosy, I opened the top of the podium and noticed a bunch of set lists and a capo in it.

So I set the podium at the back of the stage. As we were getting ready to play, one of the guitarists says, "Dang! I left my capo at home." I ceremoniously got up, walked back to the podium, and extracted the capo. I gave it to him, telling him I was an instrument of god, who had put the capo in the podium.

[Munjibunga]

Originally Posted by bassybill

Interesting responses. I'll let the discussion continue for a bit then add what I posted on my friend's Facebook story about this. For the moment I'll just go on record as saying that I'm certain that supernatural explanations involving "energies" or "contact" are completely unnecessary for understanding what happened.

You mean, like, the guy had previously told him the story of his twin brother, but forgot about it?

[PazzoBasso]

Sounds like a weird coincidence.

If something is beyond logical, scientific explanation, then it can't be explained.

Just ask the Amazing Randy.

[bassybill]

Originally Posted by Munjibunga

You mean, like, the guy had previously told him the story of his twin brother, but forgot about it?

Even that isn't really necessary, although something like that to make him associate the two names could be a factor. But even without that sort of influence and assuming the mistake with the name was completely random, such events are inevitable, purely from a statistical point of view. The really surprising thing would be if something like this NEVER happened.

[line6man]

This phenomena is called pareidolia. A random stimulus is perceived as being significant, when in reality, it means nothing.

Is this the first time the guy was mistakingly called by a different name? It is likely that he only paid attention to this because the name he was called carried some significance to his life.

[bassybill]

Originally Posted by PazzoBasso

Sounds like a weird coincidence.

If something is beyond logical, scientific explanation, then it can't be explained.

Just ask the Amazing Randy.

It is indeed a "weird coincidence", but one that is certainly susceptible of logical explanation.

[bassybill]

Originally Posted by line6man

This phenomena is called pareidolia. A random stimulus is perceived as being significant, when in reality, it means nothing.

Is this the first time the guy was mistakingly called by a different name? It is likely that he only paid attention to this because the name he was called carried some significance to his life.

I believe this is on the right lines. Our intuitive view of the improbability of such an event is hopelessly inaccurate.

I'm sure that even just here in the UK, a living person has accidentally been called by the name of a twin sibling who died in their first year many, many times in recent years (say, in living memory), entirely without the person making the mistake having any knowledge of the dead twin at all. I'd be completely astounded if such a coincidence never, ever occurred.

[Simo98]

Probably just a weird coincidence. People call me the wrong name all the time. If I had a twin brother die i'd have probably been called his name by now.

Of course, it could always be some spirit/ghost/whatever. I personally don't like to dismiss any of that sort of stuff, I just don't automatically leap towards it as an explanation either. I'm sure there is probably some truth (significant or not, who knows) to all that superstitious stuff somewhere and I like to try and keep an open mind whenever I can.

[bassybill]

Originally Posted by Simo98

Probably just a weird coincidence. People call me the wrong name all the time. If I had a twin brother die i'd have probably been called his name by now.

Of course, it could always be some spirit/ghost/whatever. I personally don't like to dismiss any of that sort of stuff, I just don't automatically leap towards it as an explanation either. I'm sure there is probably some truth (significant or not, who knows) to all that superstitious stuff somewhere and I like to try and keep an open mind whenever I can.

Bingo - for the first bit.

As for the second bit, I don't know for certain about ghosts and spirits and neither does anybody else. What I do know is that this particular coincidence can be explained - even predicted with certainty, in a general way - without any need for supernatural factors.

[jp58]

I harbor 0 faith in superstitions or the like.

It would be freaky or neat when it happened, but I wouldn't read anything into it.

[bassybill]

As we seem to have edged towards the explanation for this, here's my Facebook post that I mentioned earlier:

Originally Posted by me on Facebook

Coincidences, even very impressive ones such as this, happen all the time. They feel very strange when they happen to you personally, but the large number of people in the world means that stuff like this and even more amazing things are bound to happen from time to time.

I just did some Googling and some very rough sums. There are about 700,000 babies born in the UK each year, and about 42,000 of those are twins. Given a life expectancy of 70 years, that's nearly 3 million twins alive in this country. The frequency of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome suggests that about 2,000 of these will have lost their twin sibling before the age of one. So that's two thousand people walking around with a similar family history (in this respect) to your student.

Now, what are the odds of one of them accidentally being called by the name of their dead twin at some time in their life? I would say that we all get called the wrong name occasionally - say, three times a year? 2000 people times 3 times 70 means that the living twins will get called the wrong names a total of around 420,000 times during their lifetimes. And any one of those 420,000 mistakes could be one of them getting called the name of their dead twin. Given that we don't have anywhere near that many different names in use, the coincidence you describe is pretty much inevitable in this country (let alone the rest of the world) and almost certainly happens on multiple occasions over a normal human timescale. The general phonetic similarity of "Brandon" and "Callum", plus the Irish origin of both names, are other factors in play here that are more difficult to calculate, so I'll leave readers of this comment to reflect on those.

Your experience yesterday was certainly a most unusual coincidence, but like any other coincidence it can be explained perfectly well statistically and without any need for invoking the supernatural. I hope you found this interesting.

[Rune Bivrin]

To add to this, I wonder if there isn't some "pairing" going on with twin names. Maybe Callum and Brandon are common names of twins, indicating a linking which will make it more likely for people to mix them up?

[Relic]

Originally Posted by bassybill

Even that isn't really necessary, although something like that to make him associate the two names could be a factor. But even without that sort of influence and assuming the mistake with the name was completely random, such events are inevitable, purely from a statistical point of view. The really surprising thing would be if something like this NEVER happened.

Yeah I agree with this. Think about the sheer number of random stuff that happens to us every single day - we process some things, other things our brains kinda deem "unimportant" so it's barely noticed at all. But when some random thing that has some sort of significance happens...? We look at it like it's so rare and unusual, but in reality the statistical chance of encountering something like this in our day to day is pretty much inevitable.
Then when it does happen, since we were not really processing every single thing, we look as it as though it's something amazing when it's not at all..

[Skitch it!]

The first thing I thought of would be phonetics and phonetic association, I've had similar with new student's, phonetically substituting because I've forgotten the proper name and 'formed' one that has similar phonetics.

I'd say the only coincidence there is that the student had a brother of that name.

[MakiSupaStar]

If humans are good at anything, it's the perception of 'order' where there is actually none.