The sound of gender – correlations of name phonology and gender across languages

Abstract

Our article is dedicated to the relation of a given name’s phonological structure and the gender of the referent. Phonology has been shown to play an important role with regard to gender marking on a name in some (Germanic) languages. For example, studies on English and on German have shown in detail that female and male names have significantly different phonological structures. However, little is known whether these phonological patterns are valid beyond (closely related) individual languages. This study, therefore, sets out to assess the relation of gender and the phonological structures of names across different languages/cultures. In order to do so, we analyzed a sample of popular given names from 13 countries. Our results indicate that there are both language/culture-overarching similarities between names used for people of the same gender and language/culture-specific correlations. Finally, our results are interpreted against the backdrop of conventional and synesthetic sound symbolism.

Phonological Features of Saudi Arabian Anthroponyms

“…In contrast to traditional male names, traditional female names tend to contain a more significant number of sounds and syllables, end in a vowel or sonorant, and exhibit non-initial stress, according to phonological studies on English-given names (Slater & Feinman, 1985;Cutler, McQueen, & Robinson, 1990; Barry & Harper, 1995;Cassidy, Kelly, & Sharoni, 1999;Whissell, 2001;Ackermann & Zimmer, 2021). Similarly, according to a popular name book, the most elegant names for newborn girls typically feature multiple syllables, many vowels, and rhythmic patterns (Rosenkrantz & Satran, 2014).…”

Sound symbolism in Japanese names: Machine learning approaches to gender classification

“…The application of the frequency code to consonants remains a puzzle, given that formant frequencies fail to provide informative cues regarding the manner and place of articulation of consonants. Moreover, disparities emerge in the consonant-to-size mappings observed in fictional creations [ 9 , 28 – 31 ] and those examining existing given names [ 32 – 35 ]. While all these studies reference the frequency code as the underlying factor driving observed patterns, patterns reported in these studies vary across these investigations.…”

“…In accordance to the frequency code [ 14 , 15 ], vowels with high resonating frequencies (e.g., /i/ and /e/) were commonly attested in female names, and while low frequency vowels (e.g., /u/ and /o/) were found in male names. Studies have reported systematic sound-meaning mappings in English personal names [ 32 , 33 , 35 , 38 , 40 , 41 , 48 , 49 ]. These studies have found systematic prosodic-phonological patterns in names of different genders which includes ‘consonant sonority’, ‘quality of stressed vowels’, ‘number of syllables’, ‘number of phonemes’, and ‘stress location’ (see Table 1 for details).…”

“…Recently, studies have expanded to cross language comparison. Ackermann and Zimmer [ 32 ] examined cross-linguistics systematic sound-gender patterns in first names from 13 countries. Critically, this included languages that are geographically and culturally distant as well as typologically unrelated, such as Mandarin, Turkish, Japanese, Romanian, German, Hebrew,among others.…”

Willingness to pay for female-made wine: Evidence from an online experiment

“…Some wine descriptors used by experts can be classified as feminine or masculine (Masset, Terrier, and Livat, 2023). In the wine industry, the name of the winemaker or the owner of the winery (the producer hereafter) can appear on the label, enabling the consumer to infer the producer's gender from the first name (Ackermann and Zimmer, 2021;Cassidy, Kelly, and Sharoni, 1999). Because gender stereotypes might give rise to biased judgments and decisions, transactions on product markets can be affected by such gender recognition.…”