Your brand name makes me think of ...

Phonemes, priming and Psy-copy®

Have you ever wondered why certain brand or business names pull us in more than others?

It could be due partly to sound symbolism. Now, unless you’re a poet, you’re excused for not dwelling on phonemes, fricatives and syllabic stress in your marketing huddles.

Yet each letter, phoneme or syllable in your name has the potential to resonate (or not) with buyers. Your business name is often your buyers’ first contact with you. And the sound of your business name is the first indicator of your brand values or personality.

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Names are the labels on your brain’s filing cabinet

Picture yourself walking into a room filled with countless drawers containing unknown items. Without labels, finding what you need is frustrating.

Business names effectively serve as labels on your brain’s filing cabinet.

Names help us categorise what you offer quickly and decide whether your brand or service is relevant (or worth a closer look).

The hidden power of heuristics

Names and heuristics are also all jumbled up together in the mental mix-up.

Heuristics are rules-of-thumb that our brains use as shortcuts when we want to make quick decisions about the information in front of us.

We don’t come across names, businesses or brands in isolation. We encounter them with all the baggage of our pattern-making, familiarity-loving, rule-of-thumb-reliant brains.

And that’s why marketers should think carefully about the emotions a name choice brings to mind. These emotions can spring from the associations the name primes us with. They can also come from the sound of the name itself.

Which leads me to my favourite topic, copy psychology.

Let’s look at a couple of ways that our brains make sense of names in rapid-fire fashion.

Euphony, or the sound-good factor

Every marketer with a passing interest in the psychology of words has heard of the Kiki/Bouba experiment.

This study (and variations on it) mapped the sound of words to our perception of the shape of object described.

The original study asked participants to match nonsense words to a shape.

A majority matched Kiki to a sharp-edged shape and Bouba to a curved one. Researchers have since observed similar findings in people across different cultures, native languages and age profiles.

Read more about the Bouba/Kiki Effect here.

The sound-good factor matters, which is why marketers should aim for euphony in naming.

Google, for example, is a euphonic name, because the double o gives it an agreeable, harmonious quality. Gaggle is awful, Guggle is worse, and Giggle is way off-brand. But Google is just right.

It’s all about the phonemes.

WTF have phonemes got to do with marketing?

Glad you asked.

Here’s one persuasive theory … the way we produce spoken sounds (or phonemes) in our bodies influences our perception of the thing described.

So what’s a phoneme exactly?

A phoneme is a small unit of sound.

The sound of the letter j in job is a phoneme.

The sound of the sh in ship is also a phoneme.

Let’s take English as an example. Some phonemes sound sweeter to our ears than others. They’re softer, rounder or more melodic.

Certain phonetic patterns have generally positive connotations too.

For example, L and R sounds flow easily and smoothly off the tongue. To see what I mean, try saying them to yourself.

It’s worth remembering that vowels sound softer than consonants too. As you say vowels, the air flows easily through your vocal chords and out your mouth.

Certain vowel sounds are more easily associated with positive emotions. For instance, the long o sound in a word like soothe (or Google) is often perceived as comforting.

The ee sound in a word like sweet even forces you to ‘smile’ as you say it. Try it and see.

Ah suggests understanding, while uh implies confusion and oh surprise.

Sounds that soothe (or don’t)

Hissing or buzzing consonants, known as fricatives, aren’t as harmonious as those rolling ls and rs.

When you say them, you’ll notice that your mouth and vocal cords produce the sound differently.

Try f as in fan and z as in zip. Compare how they sound, in contrast to the smooth, flowing l as in love or r as in run.

Sound symbolism and names

Sound symbolism refers to certain sounds or phonetic patterns that we already associate with specific meanings or qualities.

Marketers can leverage this by choosing names with phonetic qualities strategically aligned with the brand’s values or personality. The phonemes in a well-chosen name can reinforce brand voice.

For example, sharp, crisp sounds like k or t help convey precision or efficiency.

On the other hand, soft vowel sounds like the long o in skincare brand Dove, suggest nurture. And of course, we’re primed by the word dove itself - a bird associated with whiteness, purity and gentleness.

Spondaic feet - now they’re catchy

Syllable structure can also influence our emotional response to a name.

For example, a two-syllable name with a stressed-unstressed pattern - like Starbucks - sounds more accented, making the brand feel urgent and lively. That pattern is called a trochee (I’m not sure how to pronounce it either).

Unlike trochees, spondaic feet contain two stressed syllables. Netflix and TicTac follow this format. This is a much more unusual sound structure for names, but gives the effect of forcefulness or intensity.

Subliminal priming through association

Subliminal priming refers to the subtle activation of certain ideas or concepts in your subconscious mind. These ideas can influence your thoughts and behaviour.

In the context of naming, marketers can use words, or elements of words, to prime with positive associations or emotions.

In a name, phonetic patterns resembling words associated with success or happiness create subconscious positive bias towards the brand.

For example, the phonetic pattern ex- can imply excellence or superiority, as seen in brands like Expedia or Microsoft Excel.

The name Lush is another great example of priming through association. The word itself primes us to associate the brand with nature - fresh, indulgent and full of life. We associate the brand with all things green and gorgeous, before we even pick up a bath bomb.

The individual phonemes of the word lush are also totally on-brand - the rounded l sound, soft vowel and the melodic, hissing sh.

Psy-copy® naming prompts: sound symbolism

There’s an element of poetry in great copy. Marketers with a deep, strategic understanding of how language works, and crucially how it makes us feel, can play with words to create names that not only sound good, but feel good too.

Here’s a couple of sound symbolism prompts to noodle with in your marketing team.

Sometimes they’ll help you come up with new, better names. Other times, you’ll be able to optimise options you already have.

Pull apart the phonemes in your name choices and ask yourself these two questions -

1. Is it more appropriate for your business to use soft, smooth phonemes or sharp, crisp ones? Relate the sound to your brand values, personality, or even features of the product/service itself.

2. What bodily movements create the sound? And what emotions follow? For example, does your mouth move into a smile as you say the name?

Next steps

That’s just a drop in the naming ocean. You’ll find a full checklist of naming prompts in my guide to brand naming. It’s free (no sign-up needed) on my website.

If you need outside eyes on your messaging, brand voice or copy project, just get in touch. Here’s a link to my services. You can book a chat in my calendar over there.

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I’m Sue Moore, B2B Copywriter and Messaging Strategist. I fix your words and messaging using copy psychology, so you connect with your buyers human-to-human.

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Want the background research?

Phonetic symbolism and brand name preference.

Creating meaningful new brand names: a study of semantics and sounds symbolism.

Evaluating brand names without vowels.

Sounds good: phonetic sound patterns in top brand names.

Advertising brands by means of sound symbolism.

The connotative meanings of sound symbolism in brand names: a conceptual framework.