Fantasy and fiction
How Fantasy Names Work: Sound Symbolism and Phonaesthetics
At a glance
Sound symbolism is a link between speech sounds and meaning that is not purely arbitrary. In experiments, most people match the made-up word bouba to a rounded shape and kiki to a spiky one, and a 2022 test across 25 languages found it in most of them. Studies of Pokémon names found that names with more voiced consonants such as b, d, g and z, and longer names, tend to belong to bigger, stronger characters. These are tendencies, not rules: no sound means 'evil' or 'elvish' on its own.
- Classic experiment
- Köhler's takete and maluma (1929, 1947); bouba and kiki (Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001)
- Biggest cross-language test
- 917 people, 25 languages: more than 70% of responses matched the expected pattern
- Sounds linked with size
- Voiced consonants (b, d, g, z) and the vowel a for big; the vowel i for small
- Sounds in 'pleasant' words
- l and m, smooth consonants, few clusters (Crystal, 1995)
Test words, fictional names and a few of our own
| Name | Meaning or origin | Status |
|---|---|---|
| takete / maluma Experimental nonsense words | Köhler's pair: takete matched to a spiky figure, maluma (earlier baluba) to a rounded one. [2] | Recorded |
| kiki / bouba Experimental nonsense words | Ramachandran and Hubbard's 2001 version of the same test: kiki spiky, bouba round. [2] | Recorded |
| mil / mal Experimental nonsense words | Sapir (1929): people tended to name a small table mil and a large one mal. [1] | Recorded |
| Gorbag, Shagrat Tolkien, Orkish names | Tolkien's orc names: voiced consonants and back vowels give them a heavy, harsh sound. [8] | Recorded |
| Manwë Tolkien, Quenya | The two dots tell English readers to pronounce the final e. [8] | Recorded |
| Eärendil Tolkien, Quenya | The two dots show that e and a are separate vowels, not one sound. [8] | Recorded |
| Lirameli Our example: soft pattern | Built with l, r, m and front vowels, the pattern Crystal found in 'pleasant' words. | Invented |
| Grukdag Our example: harsh pattern | Voiced plosives (g, d) and back vowels, the Orkish pattern Rosenfelder describes. | Invented |
| Velsh'ar Our example: apostrophe | An apostrophe with no defined sound. Readers can't tell what it means, which is the problem. | Invented |
| Selladore English, respelt | C. S. Lewis's respelling of 'cellar door' as an invented proper name, in a 1963 letter. [9] | Recorded |
- Recorded Found in historical records.
- Invented An original name, made for this site.
Bouba, kiki and the shape of a sound
Most of the time the link between a word and its meaning is arbitrary. Trees are arbor in Latin, Baum in German and ki in Japanese. But researchers have long noticed exceptions, where a sound seems to suit what it names. This is called sound symbolism.[1]
Modern experiments began in the 1920s. Edward Sapir found that people tended to give the made-up name mal to a large table and mil to a small one. The psychologist Wolfgang Köhler showed people a rounded figure and a spiky one and asked which was takete. Most picked the spiky one, leaving the round shape for baluba (maluma in his 1947 edition).[1][2]
In 2001 V. S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard repeated the test with bouba and kiki, and the name stuck.[3][2] The largest check so far, published in 2022, tested 917 speakers of 25 languages using ten writing systems. On average more than 70% of responses matched bouba to round and kiki to spiky, and speakers of 17 of the 25 languages showed the effect clearly. Results varied from language to language, and an earlier study of Syuba speakers in Nepal found no effect at all.[2] So the effect is strong and widespread, but not universal.
Big, heavy and harsh: what the research says
A team led by Shigeto Kawahara studied every Japanese Pokémon name available in 2016. Names with more voiced obstruents (b, d, g, z) tended to belong to bigger, heavier Pokémon and to more evolved forms. Longer names went with bigger and stronger characters too. Names starting with high vowels such as i leaned towards smaller, lighter Pokémon, though that effect was small.[4] The authors link this to the 'frequency code' idea: low-pitched sounds suggest large things and high-pitched sounds small ones.[4]
The vowel link goes back to Sapir: many English speakers feel a is bigger than i.[4] But the pattern is not fixed for every language. In Korean ideophones, a is linked with smallness.[1]
Beauty has been studied too. David Crystal analysed lists of words people call beautiful, such as melody, velvet and gossamer. They favoured l and m and smooth, continuous consonants, used few consonant clusters, and often had three syllables with the stress on the first. Crystal was careful to say his sample was small, and that sound and meaning can't be fully separated: pleasant-sounding words usually mean pleasant things.[5]
Making a culture's names hang together
A single good name matters less than a set that sounds like it belongs to one people. Mark Rosenfelder's Language Construction Kit points out that Tolkien's Orkish relies on harsh consonants, while his Elvish is full of vowels, l and r.[6] Names like Gorbag and Shagrat lean on voiced consonants such as g and b; say them with k and p instead and they lose much of their menace.
Tolkien built his Elvish sounds on languages he loved. He wrote to W. H. Auden that Welsh names had fascinated him since childhood, and that finding a Finnish grammar made his own invented language heavily 'Finnicized' in sound and structure.[7]
The practical lesson is to choose a small set of sounds and syllable shapes for each culture and stick to it. That is writing advice rather than a research finding, but it follows from the evidence: readers notice patterns, and a name that breaks the pattern stands out.
Apostrophes and accents
Rosenfelder warns against adding apostrophes just to make a word look alien. Real languages use the apostrophe for very different things: a glottal stop in Hawaiian, a dropped letter in English, a syllable break in romanised Chinese. Because of that, it tells the reader nothing on its own. He gives similar advice on accents: give each mark one clear job and keep it.[6]
Tolkien's own spelling is the usual model. He spelt Quenya much like Latin and used two dots to show readers which vowels to sound separately, as in Eärendil, or that a final e is pronounced, as in Manwë.[6][8]
What is proven, and what is just advice
- Well supported: most people, across many languages, link bouba-type words with round shapes and kiki-type words with spiky ones.[2]
- Supported, but varies by language: voiced consonants and the vowel a suggest size and weight; i suggests smallness.[4][1]
- Writing advice: keep each culture's sounds consistent, and don't use apostrophes or accents without a reason.[6]
- Myth: that 'cellar door' has been shown to be the most beautiful phrase in English. It is an old claim that Tolkien repeated in a 1955 lecture. The lexicographer Grant Barrett traced it back to the early 1900s, long before Tolkien, and nobody has ever tested it. C. S. Lewis later noted that spelling it Selladore makes a lovely name.[9]
Sound symbolism nudges readers; it does not decide for them. A villain called Lirameli can still be terrifying if the story makes him so.