Sound and phonetics in 2010s: Brand sound labs

Across many languages, people tend to match a rounded nonce word to a rounded shape and a spiky word to a spiky shape — a famous sound-symbolism demo. Why do name endings cluster in fashion? Lieberson noted that parents copy the feel of neighbouring names. Shared endings (-en, -a, -son) are phonetic fashion, visible in SSA and ONS series.

Is an “unpronounceable” name objectively hard? Hard for whom? Phonotactics are language-specific. English clusters can be easy in Polish and vice versa. Do brands use sound symbolism on purpose? Yes — brand-naming often tests vowels and voiced consonants. That is marketing craft, still not destiny.

Can phonetics explain Emily vs Lakisha callbacks? Only as a small fluency factor. Bertrand and Mullainathan’s gap is primarily about racialised inference, not syllable difficulty. Should I pick a name that fits local sounds? It reduces correction labour. Heritage names that break local phonotactics are a values choice, not a mistake.