Science Says These Are The Most Pleasing Names To Hear — Is Yours On The List?
A study by linguistics professor uncovers the names that are music to our ears.
Bailey Burton | Unsplash Have you ever noticed how some names make you smile while others make you shudder? Luke or Leia may stir feelings of happiness. Rocky or Taylor may spark inspiration. Donald or Hillary might make you cringe.
Many parents agonize over what to name their child because they realize that it is often the basis of a first impression. Names made famous (or infamous) because of celebrity in fiction or the real world may unconsciously rouse emotions tied to that character. Disturbingly, names can also provoke implicit bias against individuals based on racial and ethnic stereotypes.
Unique names are on the rise despite studies suggesting that common names bestow significant advantages. Because they are familiar, simple, and common names tend to breed trust and camaraderie.
One study showed that we are more altruistic to those who share our name. Another showed that immigrants who Americanized their names were more successful in their new country.
Other potential downsides to a unique name include the pressure to stand out from the crowd or narcissism. Some researchers have suggested that a person’s name may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, predicting their vocation later in life.
This concept is called nominative determinism. Examples include someone named Art becoming an artist or someone named Butz becoming a proctologist. Another study suggests that people tend to alter their appearance to be in sync with their name.
As a father and a scientist, I’m intrigued by the psychology underlying the naming of a child as well as how that name is perceived.
Recent studies suggest that the individual sound components of a word, including a person’s name, trigger unconscious feelings in our brain.
NDAB Creativity / Shutterstock
The Bouba/Kiki effect
Certain sounds, or phonemes, seem to carry specific meaning. Researchers have shown that people associate nonwords with certain shapes. Participants associate a made-up word like “bouba” with round shapes and “kiki” with sharp shapes. This phenomenon has been dubbed the Bouba/Kiki effect.
The human brain appears to have been wired through evolution to respond to certain sound waves and rhythms. Particular sounds are crucial for survival; for example, a scream indicates danger while a laugh can diffuse a tense situation. Specific sound waves induce conserved responses in the brain, which raises the idea that a person’s name can elicit universal sensations when heard.
A 2015 study provided evidence that the sound components within names can produce a Bouba/Kiki effect. How “round” or “sharp” a name sounds can factor into the judgment of that person’s personality.
One of the researchers commented, “So a name like Bob or Molly, for example, it’s a bit smoother when you say it versus a name like Kirk or Kate, which kind of has this abruptness to it … People will match those kinds of qualities, like abruptness or smoothness, metaphorically with these traits like being easy going or maybe being rude.”
What names sound the most pleasing to our ears?
Bodo Winter, an associate professor in cognitive linguistics at the University of Birmingham, set out to determine which names sound the “most beautiful” when spoken out loud. He recruited hundreds of diverse individuals to listen to the pronunciation of the most popular names for 2022 in the UK and US.
Scoring of the names was based on a system devised by James Adelman, who conducted a similar study in 2018 on basic words (not names). Adelman’s findings were consistent with the Bouba/Kiki effect, leading him to conclude that “human languages signal emotions via individual phonemes.”
Winter’s study extends Adelman’s findings to common names in the US and UK. Some names are perceived as more pleasing than others, based on the emotional responses to the sounds heard when the name is annunciated.
Results indicated that Sophia, which means “wisdom” in Greek, is the “most beautiful” sounding name in both countries. Commenting on the result, Winter stated, “The name Sophia contains a combination of sounds that are treated as pleasant by the brain, because of their smoothness and softness.” Zoe placed second for girls in each country.
Matthew was the top-ranked name for boys in the US. In the UK, it was Zayn. I was happy to see my name on both lists, although I go by Bill and not William. Maybe I should change that?
The top ten most beautiful sounding names in the US were:
Rank (Boys; Girls)
- Matthew; Sophia
- Julian; Zoe
- William; Everly
- Isaiah; Sophie
- Leo; Riley
- Levi; Ivy
- Joseph; Paisley
- Theo; Willow
- Isaac; Ellie
- Samuel; Emily
The top ten most beautiful sounding names in the UK were:
Rank (Boys; Girls)
- Zayn; Sophia
- Jesse; Zoe
- Charlie; Rosie
- Louie; Sophie
- William; Ivy
- Freddie; Phoebe
- George; Violet
- Ali; Willow
- Daniel; Hannah
- Riley; Ellie
While these studies suggest that our subconscious starts to make assumptions about people based on their name alone, it is crucial that we never judge a book by its cover. Be aware of your unconscious bias and get to know someone’s character before leaping to conclusions about them.
Bill Sullivan is a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine and author of Pleased To Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are.” Sullivan has written for The Washington Post, National Geographic, Discover, Scientific American, WIRED, Psychology Today, and more, and appeared on CNN, Fox & Friends, The Doctors, CBS News, TEDx, and more.
