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

David M Sidhu,Penny M Pexman,Ruth Filik

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0126809

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.

Highlights

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” [1]
In order to test whether the Bouba/Kiki effect extends to real names, we conducted a variation of the classic Bouba/Kiki task using as language stimuli existing first names containing either round- or sharp-sounding phonemes, and as shape stimuli character silhouettes that were comprised of either rounded or jagged contours
We examined the effect of name gender, name type and participant gender on shape selection by way of a mixed effects logistic regression in which the dependent variable was the likelihood of selecting the round silhouette

Summary

Introduction

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” [1]. While the Bouba/Kiki effect has generalized to a variety of paradigms, age groups, cultures, and even recently to real objects [19], it has so far been limited in at least one way: there has yet to be a demonstration that the Bouba/Kiki effect emerges when using real words This has been taken to mean that this kind of sound symbolism applies only to unfamiliar language stimuli. In order to test whether the Bouba/Kiki effect extends to real names, we conducted a variation of the classic Bouba/Kiki task using as language stimuli existing first names containing either round- or sharp-sounding phonemes, and as shape stimuli character silhouettes that were comprised of either rounded or jagged contours

Method

Results

Discussion

General Discussion