Abstract
Low- and high-frequency vowels in the stressed syllable of French first names may respectively project impressions of largeness/masculinity and smallness/femininity. Given that first names can have a lifelong impact on the bearer, parents should choose a name based on the impressions they want their offspring to evoke in other people. This name-to-mental-image association can be mediated through sound symbolism: a natural link between the sounds and meaning of a word. From an evolutionary perspective, parents should pick names which sounds convey traits advantageous in human sexual selection: largeness and masculinity for males through lower-frequency sounds as opposed to smallness and femininity for females through higher-frequency sounds. Using a database of French first names from 1900 to 2009, we observed a sex-biased sound symbolism pattern in the last syllable, which is the perceptually prominent one in French. Male names were more likely to include lower-frequency vowels (e.g. /o/, /ã/) and female names higher-frequency vowels (e.g. /i/, /e/). Unexpected patterns in consonants were observed in masculine names with higher-frequency sounds (e.g. /s/, /ʃ/) in the last syllable and lower-frequency sounds (e.g. /b/, /g/) in the first syllable. However, little variance was explained and the modest size effect suggests that cultural traits influence these sex differences. Lastly, exploratory analyses revealed a phonetic masculinization in women's first names that has increased since the 1960s.
Highlights
Arbitrariness, the notion that the sound and the meaning of a word are independent, has long been considered one of the most widely shared principles in linguistics
We found a sex-biased sound structure in first names as a function of the syllable under study (Table 2)
In the last stressed syllable, significant clues of masculinity were given by the vowel place of articulation (x22 = 11.82, p < 0.01), nasality (x21 = 65.41, p < 0.001) and voiceless fricatives (x21 = 13.23, p < 0.001)
Summary
Arbitrariness, the notion that the sound and the meaning of a word are independent, has long been considered one of the most widely shared principles in linguistics. The hypothesized reason is that the frequency of vocalizations reflects a projection of the individual’s body size, a key determinant in the outcome of physical contests and courtship interactions (Bradbury and Vehrencamp 2011) This notion was extended to humans in the ‘frequency-code’ theory (Ohala 1984), which provides a plausible explanation for the observed vocal dimorphism in human voices. Boys and girls exhibit similar vocal frequencies, until males experience a significant enlargement of their larynx and vocal folds under the influence of androgens, which lowers their vocal pitch and resonant frequencies to the point that they practically do not overlap with those of adult females (Titze 1989) Such findings hint towards the action of sexual selection and can be interpreted as a result of different selective pressures acting on each sex (Puts 2010). Higher frequencies in female voices could have been selected in mate-choice dynamics as such frequencies were shown to be associated with perceived smallness, femininity and more attractive women (Xu et al 2013; Fraccaro et al 2011; Puts et al 2011; Jones et al 2010; Feinberg et al 2008; Collins and Missing 2003)
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