What’s in a Name? Sound Symbolism and Gender in First Names

Abstract

Although the arbitrariness of language has been considered one of its defining features, studies have demonstrated that certain phonemes tend to be associated with certain kinds of meaning. A well-known example is the Bouba/Kiki effect, in which nonwords like bouba are associated with round shapes while nonwords like kiki are associated with sharp shapes. These sound symbolic associations have thus far been limited to nonwords. Here we tested whether or not the Bouba/Kiki effect extends to existing lexical stimuli; in particular, real first names. We found that the roundness/sharpness of the phonemes in first names impacted whether the names were associated with round or sharp shapes in the form of character silhouettes (Experiments 1a and 1b). We also observed an association between femaleness and round shapes, and maleness and sharp shapes. We next investigated whether this association would extend to the features of language and found the proportion of round-sounding phonemes was related to name gender (Analysis of Category Norms). Finally, we investigated whether sound symbolic associations for first names would be observed for other abstract properties; in particular, personality traits (Experiment 2). We found that adjectives previously judged to be either descriptive of a figuratively ‘round’ or a ‘sharp’ personality were associated with names containing either round- or sharp-sounding phonemes, respectively. These results demonstrate that sound symbolic associations extend to existing lexical stimuli, providing a new example of non-arbitrary mappings between form and meaning.

Sound Symbolic Patterns in Pokémon Names

“…Previous studies have shown that sound symbolic patterns are operative in naming patterns of proper names as well (Berlin, 2006;Kawahara and Shinohara, 2012;Köhler, 1947;Perfors, 2004;Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001;Shinohara and Kawahara, 2013;Sidhu and Pexman, 2015;Wright and Hay, 2002;Wright et al, 2005). The current study adds to this body of the literature on the existence of sound symbolic relationships in proper names, using a new corpus of data.…”

“…/d/, /ɡ/, /z/) are often associated with "heaviness" and "largeness," and these associations have been shown to hold for English speakers (Newman, 1933) as well as for Japanese speakers (Hamano, 1986;Kawahara and Shinohara, 2012;Sidhu and Pexman, 2015) and for Chinese speakers .…”

“…It seems to be the case that in general, sonorants tend to be associated with round objects, whereas obstruents tend to be associated with angular objects . In a similar situation, a round object is more likely to be associated with bouba than with kiki (D'Onofrio, 2014;Fort et al, 2015;Maurer et al, 2006;Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001;Sidhu and Pexman, 2015). Likewise, Berlin (2006) argues that sound symbolism is operative when naming animals and insects in many languages -for example, animals that move slowly tend to be named with sounds with low frequency energy, such as labial consonants and nasal consonants.…”

The Kiki-Bouba Paradigm : Where Senses Meet And Greet

“…A sound symbolic association between first names and vague descriptions of personality traits was observed by mapping people's silhouettes and names to Kiki or Bouba. Moreover, femininity was found to be associated with Bouba and masculinity with Kiki [22]. A synesthetic bootstrapping hypothesis to describe a model of language development in infancy gains support from Kiki-Bouba experiments flagging visual and auditory signals from the inferior temporal lobe and the auditory cortex respectively with a plausible mediation by the angular gyrus [3].…”

What Does a Horgous Look Like? Nonsense Words Elicit Meaningful Drawings

“…Such apparent advantages of iconicity go beyond word‐learning. For example, people think that Bob is a better name than Mike for a round figure at rates well above chance level (Sidhu & Pexman, ). Further, Lupyan and Casasanto () had people learn to categorize two kinds of “aliens.” The aliens in one of the categories were subtly more round and in the other more pointy.…”