Sound Symbolism
Sound symbolism is the tendency of the sounds in a word to carry meaning of their own. Eric Yorkston and Geeta Menon examined it for brand names in a 2004 paper, and report that consumers infer product attributes from the phonemes in a brand name.
What it is
Sound symbolism is the tendency of the sounds in a word to carry meaning of their own. Eric Yorkston and Geeta Menon examined it for brand names in a 2004 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, and report that consumers infer product attributes from the phonemes in a brand name.
In effect
The Why We Project uses the finding in its article on branding agencies in Dubai to argue that a naming service should test how a name sounds as well as what it means.
What it does not say
The finding comes from the study named on this page and describes a pattern in that sample. It does not show that the pattern holds for every person, product or market, and it does not tell a brand what to do on its own. It is one input to a decision, to be weighed with other evidence.
Sources
- Yorkston and Menon, A sound idea: Phonetic effects of brand names on consumer judgments, Journal of Consumer Research 31(1), 2004. https://doi.org/10.1086/383422