Abstract
Recent work has argued that sound symbolism plays a much larger part in language than previously believed, given the assumption of the arbitrariness of the sign. A slate of recent papers on Pokémonastics, for example, has found sound symbolic associations to be rampant in Pokémon names cross-linguistically. In this paper, we explore a real-world dataset that parallels Pokémon, in which human players similarly have physical attributes of weight, height, and power: Major League Baseball. We investigated phonological correlations between baseball player statistics and their given first names, chosen baseball-official first names,and baseball nicknames. We found numerous sound symbolic associations in player-chosen names and nicknames, where conscious design may play a role in choosing a name that communicates an attribute. These associations were often mediated by language-specific hypocoristic formation processes. We conclude that sound symbolism occurs in real-world naming practices, but only when names are chosen in cognizance of the relevant attributes.
Highlights
The principle of the arbitrariness of the sign holds that human language involves no intrinsic relationships between linguistic form and linguistic meaning or function (e.g., Saussure 1915; Hockett 1959)
The results include a negative correlation between high vowels and player weight, which we argue is due to diminutive hypocoristics being disproportionally chosen by smaller players
We find a correlation between name length and player weight, which we argue is due to truncation hypocoristics being disproportionally chosen by larger players
Summary
The principle of the arbitrariness of the sign holds that human language involves no intrinsic relationships between linguistic form and linguistic meaning or function (e.g., Saussure 1915; Hockett 1959). We do find numerous sound symbolic associations in player-chosen names and nicknames, where conscious design plays a role in choosing a name that may communicate an attribute (see e.g., Bois 2019a, 2019b for pioneering work on athletes, including baseball players, who go by the hypocoristic Bob). Some of these sound symbolic associations are a reflex of existing morphological patterns in English, such as the diminutive construction, but others are not reducible to such “grammaticalized” instances of sound symbolism. We conclude that sound symbolism occurs in real-world naming practices, but only when names are chosen in cognizance of the relevant attributes
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