The Intelligence of Readers

I've been following a discussion the last few days on one of my writer groups about naming characters. For my part, I want my readers to set my book down after reading it and feel as if they know my characters on a personal level. Kind of like they met them at the Harrison's pool party last month. I'm of the opinion that well thought out characters elevate the story by making it a bit more personal.

My characters have personalities and personality can only be full if you know certain events that formed that personality. Real people don't have insecurities for the hell of it. Events caused them and the people around them either fed them and grew them or helped the character lessen them. So not only does the character have center stage, but all the other characters that made him or her the way they are need their spot as well.
I name my characters for several reasons. They are directly involved with the main character as a love interest, a guiding figure, a friend figure or a nemesis figure.
So taking my first novel, the main character is Vespias Firstlight. Her world was shaped by her parents Vesperis and Vashnir. In the society they come from, the first child usually has a name that mimics the father. She also had three younger siblings, Veron, Vashira and Windsong. Veron was named after his grandfather who also contributed to the children's growth as did his wife Yava. They were the parents of Vashnir who was the third of eight children.

So before two chapters are through, the character list is at nine, simply because I only named two of the other seven children that Veron and Yava had.
The main message that I'm getting is that a lot of writers don't name as many characters because they "don't want to confuse" their readers. To me, what is being said is "my readers are too stupid to follow character interactions".
If you go to a friend's house one day and they introduce you to their family, does it throw you for a loop? Of course not. What it does, is give you a frame of reference for when they relate a story from their youth. A story might be funny because when the character talks about the stupid look on their brother's face, knowing the face helps to make the story funnier. Knowing what role supporting characters have in the protagonist's life makes it that much easier to accept the fictional character as being real. Once that is established, their story is that much better.

I just find it odd that a writer would think of his readers as stupid, or at least lacking the intelligence to understand who is who and the amount of importance they carry. I like to think my readers are smart. Very smart. Genius-level smart. The smarter my readers are, the smarter it makes me because I can keep them entertained. I can spark an intelligent person's imagination and speak to them on intelligent levels.
I like to think of myself as intelligent. Certainly above the neanderthal stage of evolution. And as a member of the intelligent portion of society, why would I ever want to write for the other ones? You know, the people that only buy books with pictures. To me, to dumb down your work because you think your readers can't handle what amounts to normal life is in itself...well, to put it mildly, stupid.
Even stupid people remember the people in their life. To say that readers can't follow characters in a book implies that they are extraordinarily stupid. Epically stupid.
Thankfully, not every writer thinks this way. Writers want you to feel the full experience of their work. At least I do. I want my readers to feel the joy and pain my characters feel. I want them to smile when good things happen.
I had a reader yell at me when a character died because it made her cry. She cried at a fictional character's fictional death. She threatened to never forgive me if I didn't find a way to bring him back. To me, that was a big, fat EXCELLENT! To bring emotions to my readers is what I want. To elicit an emotion like sorrow means I made that character real enough and human enough for my reader to see him or her as a real person. And I did it by using my readers intelligence, not by thinking they're stupid.