Love Island: Gemma Calling Luca By Her Ex-boyfriend’s Name Is Actually A Compliment

When a toddler wants your attention, they often pull your hair or poke you in the face. And we’ve seen plenty of thisinfantile behaviour from Luca in the Love Island villa over the past few days.

But on Tuesday, the object of his affections, Gemma, responded with an ego-bruising remark much more hurtful than his constant creepy pestering. As he massaged her shoulders, she protested: ‘Ugh no…Jacques!’—the name of her ex-boyfriend.

Quickly, Gemma attempted to rectify her slip of the tongue. ‘Um, Luca—don’t,’ she corrected before pulling a finger up to her lips in an effort to silence the other contestants’ reactions. But it was too late.

Lucas eyes were wide with wounded shock, Paige’s mouth was handing open. ‘Did you just call him something else?’, asked Amber. ‘Oh my god, there is no way that happened, there is no way that happened!’, exclaimed Dami in elated surprise at the sudden tension.

‘This is all staged,’ accused one viewer. ‘Gemma and Jacques are together in real life. Slowly we will seem them “fall back in love” starting with Gemma calling Luca “Jacques” and dropping other hints,’ they theorised. ‘Either that was staged, or horse girl is the biggest dumbass in the show,’ suggested another.

Authenticity aside, it was nice to see Luca’s unwelcome displays of affection towards Gemma finally stopped in their tracks. But, despite his pride lying in tatters (‘I’m fuming’) as Jacques smirked in the corner, experts say that calling your boyfriend by the wrong name might not actually mean what you think it does.

**What does it mean if you call your boyfriend by the wrong name?

**Although calling your new partner your ex’s name is far from ideal when trying to make your new bae feel secure, psychologists point to an innocent explanation: Pavlovian conditioning. ‘When you’re in a state of euphoria you conjure up things that remind you of other things, because you’re in a state that has happened before,’ Dr Jim Pfaus, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Concordia University, told Vice.

In theory, Gemma calling Luca ‘Jacques’ could indicate she feels the same level of closeness with him as she did while she was coupled up with her ex. In this thought experiment, those ‘feelings of closeness’ are associated with him and, by default, his name — although Gemma's constant bids to escape Luca would seem to suggest otherwise.

As many of us know, calling someone close to us by the wrong name is not an uncommon occurrence. Siblings get muddled, friends are often amalgamated and (god forbid) sometimes you call your teacher ‘mum’.

According to a study conducted by Duke University, misnaming people is a ‘widespread phenomenon’ because we conflate two people we subconsciously sort into similar categories. ‘Overall, the misnaming of familiar individuals is drive by the relationship between the misnamer, misnamed, and named,’ the research said.

But whether Gemma is hung up on her ex, upset by Luca's advances entirely, or somewhere between the two, it’s certainly not a mistake the fishmonger will let her make twice. ‘That was bad, I am not gonna lie,’ said Paige of the mix up. ‘He was stood there, you had your guy rubbing your shoulders and you’re like… “Oooh, Jacques!”’