2.3.07

Sound Symbolism For Neanderthal Names

So, there is evidence that there are some crosslinguistic truths in terms of sound symbolism. I remember being presented with the argument that if you give the made up words takeet and ulaama (or something like that) to speakers of any language, they would say that the former is sharp and edged, but the latter is round and smooth, due to the features of the sounds. It's clear that there is an element of truth to this, but I think it doesn't extend so much. For example, there are a lot of sn- words, (the ones I can think of: snarl, sneer, sneeze, snicker, sniff, snivel, snooze, snore, snort, snot, snout, snuff) that have to do with the nose, and even still some more that don't literally but still make you think of a nose (such as snub, snooty, snotty, and maybe snide, which are all semantically related as well), but this is only in English, and maybe some genetically related languages.

What I am ultimately trying to get at, is that in English, we have names like GROK. I think that many people would say that this sounded like a name for a caveman, and even that some people would produce this or something similar if asked to make a caveman name (A friend of mine produced TROG at this question). The curiosity lies in what other cultures have for this type of thing, and whether or not ours (or theirs too, why not?) is based on some historical passing down of caveman type names that we have all just gotten used to.

Incidentally, I found a caveman name generator online I was hoping to use to gather data, but it seems to just spit out weird semi-stereotypical Native American type names, such as Black Eagle With Yellow Leg or Prancing Buffalo.