Phonetic Symbolism in First Names

Abstract

Interest in the phenomenon of sound symbolism, in which certain phonemes might be inherently associated with certain things, dates back to 400 B.C. While it has been assumed in most modern theories of linguistics that the relation between sound and meanings is arbitrary, an increasing number of studies have shown that there can be systematic sound-meaning associations. Among such systematic patterns is phonetic symbolism due to the iconicity between sound and meaning. Building upon earlier findings concerning the correlation between male and female names and certain sound classes found in English language, this study examines phonetic patterns, voiceless obstruents and sonorant consonants of the top 100 first names in four languages. The purpose of this study is to show that these tendencies may generally hold among existing first names in other languages as well. The results show that voiceless obstruents tend to be used more frequently in male names than in female names, and sonorant consonants tend to be used more frequently in female names than in male names. Indeed, this study offers further indications concerning this phenomenon, in which phonetic symbolism is not restricted to nonwords and can be found in real first names across languages. It sheds light on the phonetic factors, namely acoustics and other phonological characteristics that might trigger this systematic association.