Sex-biased sound symbolism in english-language first names

Sexual selection has resulted in sex-based size dimorphism in many mammals, including humans. In Western societies, average to taller stature men and comparatively shorter, slimmer women have higher reproductive success and are typically considered more attractive. This size dimorphism also extends...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-06, Vol.8 (6), p.e64825-e64825
Main Authors: Pitcher, Benjamin J, Mesoudi, Alex, McElligott, Alan G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Biology
Body size
Breeding success
England
Evolution
Experimental psychology
Female
Femininity
Gender Identity
Humans
Language
Male
Medicine
Names
New South Wales
Parents
Perceptions
Phonemes
Phonetics
Reproduction
Sex
Sex Characteristics
Sexism
Sexual dimorphism
Sexual selection
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Society
Sound
Speech Acoustics
Symbolism
United States
Wales
Women
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Summary:Sexual selection has resulted in sex-based size dimorphism in many mammals, including humans. In Western societies, average to taller stature men and comparatively shorter, slimmer women have higher reproductive success and are typically considered more attractive. This size dimorphism also extends to vocalisations in many species, again including humans, with larger individuals exhibiting lower formant frequencies than smaller individuals. Further, across many languages there are associations between phonemes and the expression of size (e.g. large /a, o/, small /i, e/), consistent with the frequency-size relationship in vocalisations. We suggest that naming preferences are a product of this frequency-size relationship, driving male names to sound larger and female names smaller, through sound symbolism. In a 10-year dataset of the most popular British, Australian and American names we show that male names are significantly more likely to contain larger sounding phonemes (e.g. "Thomas"), while female names are significantly more likely to contain smaller phonemes (e.g. "Emily"). The desire of parents to have comparatively larger, more masculine sons, and smaller, more feminine daughters, and the increased social success that accompanies more sex-stereotyped names, is likely to be driving English-language first names to exploit sound symbolism of size in line with sexual body size dimorphism.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0064825