Open AccessOriginal Paper
Phonetica
DOI: 10.1159/000484938

Received: June 26, 2017
Accepted after revision: November 27, 2017
Published online: April 11, 2018

Sound Symbolic Patterns in Pokémon Names
Shigeto KawaharaaaAtsushi Notob

Gakuji Kumagaic

Keio University, bTokyo Metropolitan University, and cNINJAL, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract
This paper presents a case study of sound symbolism, cases in which certain
sounds tend to be associated with particular meanings. We used the corpus of all
Japanese Pokémon names available as of October 2016. We tested the effects ofvoiced obstruents, mora counts, and vowel quality on Pokémon characters’ size,
weight, strength parameters, and evolution levels. We found that the number ofvoiced obstruents in Pokémon names correlates positively with size, weight, evolution levels, and general strength parameters, except for speed. We argue that
this result is compatible with the frequency code hypothesis of Ohala. The number of moras in Pokémon names correlates positively with size, weight, evolution
levels, and all strength parameters. Vowel height is also shown to have an influence on size and weight – Pokémon characters with initial high vowels tend to besmaller and lighter, although the effect size is not very large. Not only does thispaper offer a new case study of sound symbolism, it provides evidence that soundsymbolism is at work when naming proper nouns.
© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel

1 Introduction© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel
E-Mail karger@karger.com
www.karger.com/phoProf. Shigeto Kawahara
Keio University
2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku
Tokyo 108-8345 (Japan)
E-Mail kawahara@icl.keio.ac.jp

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This paper offers a new case study of sound symbolic patterns, in which particular sounds tend to be associated with particular meanings or images (e.g., Blasi et al.,2016; Dingemanse et al., 2015; Hamano, 1986; Hinton et al., 1994, 2006; Lockwood
and Dingemanse, 2015; Perniss et al., 2010; Sapir, 1929; Sidhu and Pexman, 2017).
Although language is a system which can in principle combine any phonotacticallypermissible sound sequences to any meanings (the thesis of arbitrariness; Hockett,
1959; Saussure, 1916), there are some systematic exceptions. The claim that there canbe connections between sounds and meanings goes back to Socrates, who argues in the
dialogue Cratylus that Greek ρ (= “r”) is used in many words that express movement,that α (= “a”) means “large,” and that o means “round,” etc. (Plato, Cratylus, 423B,
426–427). Modern research on sound symbolism was inspired by experimental workby Sapir (1929), who showed that English speakers feel /a/ to be larger than /i/. Since
then, research has revealed many sound-meaning connections, which demonstrably
hold across many languages (Blasi et al., 2016). For example, voiced obstruents (/b/,abFig. 1. Schematic illustrationof maluma (a) and takete (b)figures. A pair of a round object
and an angular object; the former is more likely to be named
maluma/bouba, and the latter ismore likely to be named takete/kiki. The figures are taken from
KawaharaandShinohara(2012), itself inspired by
Köhler (1947).

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126.235.130.226 - 4/14/2018 2:24:27 AM/d/, /ɡ/, /z/) are often associated with “heaviness” and “largeness,” and these associations have been shown to hold for English speakers (Newman, 1933) as well as forJapanese speakers (Hamano, 1986; Kawahara and Shinohara, 2012; Shinohara and
Kawahara, 2016; Sidhu and Pexman, 2015) and for Chinese speakers (Shinohara and
Kawahara, 2016).
It has also been demonstrated that sound symbolism can affect naming patterns (Berlin, 2006; Kawahara and Shinohara, 2012; Köhler, 1947; Perfors, 2004;
Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001; Sapir, 1929; Shinohara and Kawahara, 2013;
Shinohara et al., 2016). For example, Köhler’s classic study (1947) shows that, givena pair of a round object and an angular object, as in Figure 1, people tend to associate maluma with the former and takete with the latter (see Hollard and Wertheimer,
1964; Kawahara et al., 2015; Koppensteiner et al., 2016; Lindauer, 1990; Nielsen andRendall, 2013; Shinohara et al., 2016, for follow-up studies of this effect). It seems tobe the case that in general, sonorants tend to be associated with round objects, whereas
obstruents tend to be associated with angular objects (Shinohara et al., 2016). In a similar situation, a round object is more likely to be associated with bouba than with kiki(D’Onofrio, 2014; Fort et al., 2015; Maurer et al., 2006; Ramachandran and Hubbard,
2001; Sidhu and Pexman, 2015).
Likewise, Berlin (2006) argues that sound symbolism is operative when naming
animals and insects in many languages – for example, animals that move slowly tend
to be named with sounds with low frequency energy, such as labial consonants andnasal consonants. For example, Berlin (2006) compares names of 2 kinds of birds – rail
and tinamou, the latter of which moves more slowly – in 17 different languages. He
found that both nasals and labials are more likely to be used for slow-moving tinamou(e.g. mami in Cuiba and aawaa in Bora) than for rail. To provide another example, theexperiment reported in Perfors (2004) reveals that English male names with stressed
front vowels are judged to be more attractive than those with back vowels, but English
female names with stressed back vowels are judged to be more attractive than thosewith front vowels. A number of studies show that female and male names in English
are (stochastically) distinguished by many phonological features (Brown and Ford,
1961; Cassidy et al., 1999; Cutler et al., 1990; Slater and Feinman, 1985; Wright andHay, 2002; Wright et al., 2005), some of which are grounded in sound symbolic principles; for example, female names are more likely to contain sonorants than male names,
an observation that may be related to why the round figure in Figure 1 is more likely to
be called maluma than takete. All of these studies indicate that the choice of sounds inColor version available onlineaFig. 2. A sample of a pre- (a)and post-evolution (b) pair of
Pokémon. Drawn by a digitalartist, toto-mame.

bnaming patterns is not entirely random, but rather governed, at least partially, by somesound symbolic principles. In addition, a growing body of work has also examined
the impact of sound symbolism in brand names, and has shown that sound symbolism
may affect the attractiveness of the products as well as the perception of their priciness(Abel and Glinert, 2008; Bolts et al., 2016; Coulter and Coulter, 2010; Klink, 2000;
Peterson and Ross, 1972; Yorkston and Menon, 2004).
Building on this research tradition, we ask whether there are any sound symbolic
effects in Japanese Pokémon names (see Miura et al., 2012, and Ohyama, 2016, forprevious linguistic analyses of Pokémon names). Japanese has a large class of mimetic
words, which are sound symbolic (Hamano, 1986), and some Pokémon names are
based on such mimetic words. For example, ɡaburi represents an action of a “big bite,”and there is a Pokémon character named ɡaburiasu; likewise, ɡoron is a mimetic word
representing rolling movement, and a rock-like Pokémon character is named ɡoroon.
Therefore, Japanese offers an interesting test case to address whether Pokémon names
show sound symbolic patterns (although we do not want to imply at this point thatstudying Pokémon names in other languages is uninteresting, which is contrary to what
we hope; see the conclusion section).
Pokémon, whose name is etymologically a truncated compound of poketto“pocket” and monsutaa “monster,” started as a video game in 1995 by Nintendo andhas been very popular in Japan and many other countries (see Tobin, 2004, and the
Wikipedia article1 for details). Pokémon features fictional creatures, themselves called“Pokémon,” who trainers can collect, train, and battle. One feature of the Pokémon
game is that Pokémon characters evolve into different, related forms with new names.
Although for copyright reasons, we are unable to reproduce actual Pokémon pictures inthis paper, Figure 2 presents a pre- and post-evolution pair of (non-official) Pokémon
characters, drawn by a digital artist.2 (These pictures were judged by many Pokémon
players to look authentic, and have been used for an experiment related to this study;
Kawahara and Kumagai, in press.) Each Pokémon character officially has size, height,
and strength parameters, the last of which includes HP (for “hit point” = stamina),
attack, defense, special attack, special defense, and speed.

2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pokemon.
Her website can be found at: https://t0t0mo.jimdo.com.

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As of 2016, there are more than 700 Pokémon characters in total, which is thetarget of the current study. The current corpus-based study suggests that there areindeed some systematic patterns in Pokémon characters’ names, which can be considered to be sound symbolic. More specifically, we show that the number of voiced
obstruents in Pokémon names positively correlates with a Pokémon character’s size,
weight, evolution levels, and general strength parameters, except for speed. The
number of moras in Pokémon names positively correlates with size, weight, evolution levels, and all strength parameters. Finally, Pokémon characters with high vowels in the initial syllables tend to be smaller and lighter, although its effect size issmall; no apparent effects of vowel quality on evolution levels or strength parameters
are observed.
There are several reasons for using the corpus of Pokémon characters in order toexplore sound symbolic patterns in naming patterns of proper names. First, there are
more than 700 Pokémon characters, as of October 2016, guaranteeing enough data
points for a quantitative analysis. Although there is an impressionistic observation in
Japanese phonology that voiced obstruents are associated with heavy images (Hamano,
1986; Kawahara, 2015; Kubozono, 1999b), for example, there has been no quantitative
study on the sound symbolic pattern using a natural corpus.3 Second, each Pokémon
character has many numeric parameters, such as size, weight, and various strengthparameters, which allow us to examine which parameters correlate with which soundproperties.
This paper targets the effects of voiced obstruents, mora lengths, and vowel quality in initial syllables, but we by no means claim that these are the only sound symbolic patterns lurking behind the Pokémon naming systems in Japanese – interested
researchers are welcome to follow up on our case study.
One final important caveat is in order. Pokémon names do sometimes include
real, existing words in Japanese. For example, hushiɡidane consists of hushiɡi “mysterious” and tane “seed” (the first consonant of the second word becomes voiced
by a morphophonological process called rendaku; Vance, 2015; Vance and Irwin,2016). Since real words do not often follow sound symbolic relationships (the thesis of arbitrariness; Hockett, 1959; Saussure, 1916), we expected that the effects ofsound symbolism would not be perfect. Nevertheless, as with other cases of soundsymbolism, there could be stochastic tendencies. Principles of sound symbolism
may even possibly affect the choice of real words in Pokémon naming in such a waythat their names represent their characteristics, although this influence too would be
stochastic, if present at all. To illustrate this point, let us take an actual Pokémon
pre- and post-evolution pair, ɡoosuto and ɡenɡaa, the second of which is the evolved
version of the first. The first name is based on the English word ghost, and the second name is based on the German word Gänger. Why was it that ɡenɡaa, rather thanɡoosuto, was chosen as the name for the more evolved version of the character? Oneanswer is that since ɡenɡaa contains more voiced obstruents than ɡoosuto, it waschosen as a more suitable name for the evolved version of the Pokémon character.
In this way, a sound symbolic principle may affect the choice of real words, but
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There is some experimental work that supports this sound symbolic relationship in a quantitative fashion(Kawahara et al., 2008; Shinohara and Kawahara, 2016). Miura et al. (2012) also offer an analysis of Pokémon names using machine learning, who point out that voicing can be a relevant factor in determining
strength parameters.

this principle too would be stochastic. For this reason, in order to examine soundsymbolic patterns in Pokémon names, we take a statistical approach using the large
corpus.
2 Method

2.1 Hypotheses Tested
This paper analyzes three types of sound symbolic effects: those of voiced obstruents, prosodic (mora) length, and vowel quality. Voiced obstruents include a set of sounds (/b/, /d/, /ɡ/, /z/),which are produced with strong constriction or complete closure in the oral cavity – strong enough toresult in aperiodic noise, frication or burst – accompanied with vocal fold vibration (see Kawahara,
2006, for a detailed acoustic description of voiced obstruents in Japanese). Moras are basic prosodic
units in Japanese (much like syllables in English), which include a vowel (optionally preceded bya consonant), a coda nasal, and the first half of a geminate (Ito, 1989; Kawahara, 2016; Kubozono,
1999a; Labrune, 2012; Vance, 1987). For example, [to-o-kyo-o] “Tokyo” contains 4 moras, [ho-n-da]“Honda” contains 3 moras, and [po-k-ki-i] “Pocky” contains 4 moras (here and throughout, “-” represents a mora boundary). Moras, rather than segments or syllables, are used in the current analysis, as
moras are psycholinguistically prominent prosodic units for Japanese speakers (Inagaki et al., 2000;
Kureta et al., 2006; Otake et al., 1993; though see Cutler and Otake, 2002; Kawahara, 2016). Most
importantly in this context, moras are units that are used by adult Japanese speakers when counting
the number of sounds.
One reason to study the effects of voiced obstruents is that sound symbolic meanings ofvoiced obstruents are prevalent in Japanese (Hamano, 1986; Kawahara, 2015; Kawahara et al.,2008; Kubozono, 1999b; Shinohara and Kawahara, 2016). For example, there is a minimal pair inJapanese mimetic (or ideophonic) words, goro-goro and koro-koro – both of these words represent the state of a rock rolling; however, the former implies that the rolling rock is big and heavy(Hamano, 1986). Likewise, Kawahara (2015) observes that ɡandamu, a giant robot (about 15 m
and 7,500 kg) in a science fiction series anime, would sound very funny if we turn the voiced
obstruents into voiceless obstruents, i.e. kantamu. In fact, kantamu is used as a name for a parody
character in the anime Kureyon Shinchan, which looks very light. These examples illustrate that
there is a clear sense in which voiced obstruents are associated with large and heavy images inJapanese.
These associations may have a phonetic basis, which makes sense under the frequency code
hypothesis, proposed and developed by Bauer (1987) and Ohala (1984, 1994) (see also Berlin, 2006,
Gussenhoven, 2004, 2016, and others, who extended this hypothesis). In this theory, sounds withhigh fundamental frequency (f0) imply small objects, whereas those with low f0 imply large objects,
reflecting physical laws of sound vibration. Acoustically, voiced obstruents are characterized by low
frequency during their constriction (Lisker, 1978, 1986; Raphael, 1981; Stevens and Blumstein, 1981),
as well as in their surrounding vowels, especially in their low f0 and low F1 (Diehl and Molis, 1995;
Kingston and Diehl, 1994, 1995; Lisker, 1986). The low frequency components of voiced obstruentswould lead to large images, according to the frequency code hypothesis, and everything else being
equal, heavy ones.4
The effects of mora length came out during our data-mining stage. We noticed that those
Pokémon characters with higher mora counts tend to have strong parameters, heavy and large. For
example, ɡo-o-su-to (4 moras) is stronger than ɡo-o-su (3 moras); likewise, nyo-ro-bo-n (4 moras)
is stronger than nyo-ro-zo (3 moras). Also, the pair, pi-chu-u and pi-ka-chu-u, is very telling. In thefirst generation, there existed only pikachuu; in the second generation, pichuu was added as a preevolved state of pikachuu. In this pair, the “weakness” of the pre-evolution state was expressed by

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Some other work (Kawahara, 2015; Shinohara and Kawahara, 2016; Shinohara et al., 2016) proposes anarticulatory explanation of why voiced obstruents may be considered to be large. The proposal capitalizes on
the oral cavity expansion due to the aerodynamic complication involved in the production of voiced obstruents (Ohala, 1983; Proctor et al., 2010).

the truncation of the second mora, ka. Therefore, there seems to be a “longer-is-stronger” principle
in Pokémon naming conventions. In order to test this hypothesis more rigorously, we statisticallyexamined the effects of mora counts in the corpus of Pokémon names. As far as we know, no previous studies have proposed sound symbolic relationships between word length on the one hand, andnotions such as size and weight on the other (although see some examples of “quantitative iconicity”
in natural languages discussed in section 3.2). Therefore, this is a new and interesting hypothesis totest in a quantitative fashion.
The final target of the analysis was vowel quality. The effects of vowel quality are arguably the best-studied topic in the studies of sound symbolism. Sapir (1929), who inspired much ofmodern research on sound symbolism, showed that English speakers feel mal to be larger than mil.
Jespersen (1922) discussed the sound symbolic nature of the vowel /i/, pointing out, among others,
that it can imply images that are “small, slight, insignificant, or weak” (p. 557). An extensive bodyof work has revealed that cross-linguistically, high vowels tend to be judged to be smaller than nonhigh vowels, and front vowels smaller than back vowels (e.g., Berlin, 2006; Coulter and Coulter,
2010; Jakobson, 1978; Jespersen, 1922; Newman, 1933; Sapir, 1929; Shinohara and Kawahara,
2016; Ultan, 1978, among many others). It may be that degrees of oral aperture and the size ofthe oral cavity in front of the constriction are projected onto the images of size. We thus exploredthe effects of vowel quality in Pokémon names. Since different Pokémon characters have different numbers of vowels, we analyzed the initial vowels, which are prominent psycholinguistically(Browman, 1978; Brown and MacNeill, 1966; Cole, 1973; Marslen-Wilson, 1975; Mattys andSamuel, 2000; Nooteboom, 1981).
2.2 Analyses
For our analysis, we started with the corpus of the names of all the Pokémon characters available as of October 2016.5 To be conservative, we excluded those Pokémon names that are prefixedwith mega “mega.” These Pokémon characters tend to be larger and heavier, and this prefix contains
a voiced obstruent. Some Pokémon characters are distinguished only in terms of having a suffix mesu
“female” or osu “male,” and these are also excluded to avoid counting the same characters twice.
There is one Pokémon character with 4 voiced obstruents (jiɡuzaɡuma), which was excluded. This isbecause we cannot get a reliable estimate for this condition with just a single item. After excludingthese characters, 715 Pokémon names remained for the following analysis.
Each Pokémon character has its size (m) and weight (kg) specified. However, some Pokémon
characters are outstandingly large and/or heavy. For example, ɡuraadon is 3.5 m and 950 kg, while
pikachuu is only 0.4 m and 6 kg. Since the distributions of these measures are heavily right-skewed,
we took the natural logarithm of these measures, which made the distributions less skewed, as illustrated in Figure 3.
Most Pokémon characters undergo “evolution” (see Fig. 2), and when they do, they are called
by a different name. For example, nyoromo becomes nyorozo and then nyorobon. We coded theseevolution levels as 0, 1, 2, respectively. Pokémon came out in different series in different years, and
16 Pokémon characters were introduced as “pre-evolution” versions of an already existing character– they are referred to as “baby Pokémon.” For example, pichuu was added as the baby Pokémon of
pikachuu, whose evolved version is raichuu. In such cases, their evolution levels are coded as –1, 0, 1,
where the baby Pokémon is coded as –1. Some Pokémon characters do not undergo any evolution, in
which case they are coded as 0. Finally, each Pokémon is specified for its strength parameters, including HP, attack, defense, special attack, special defense, and speed. These measures were also used as
dependent variables.
To summarize, in our analysis, the independent variables are (1) the number of voiced obstruents, (2) the number of moras, and (3) the vowel quality (in initial syllables) in each Pokémon’s
name. The dependent variables are (1) size and weight, (2) evolution levels, and (3) their strengthparameters. Unless otherwise stated, since the number of voiced obstruents and the number of moras
are non-continuous variables, we use non-parametric Spearman rank-sum correlation analyses (ρ)

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A matrix that includes all Pokémon names and their characteristics was first created based on the chart thatwas made available at the following website: http://blog.game-de.com/pokedata/pokemon-data/ (last access,June 2017).

14
2

10
8
6
4

Log size, log m

Raw size, m

12

2
0

Raw weight, kg

800

c

600
400
200
0

b

0
–1
–2

6
Log weight, log kg

a

1

4
2
0

d –2

Fig. 3. Boxplots illustrating the distribution of size (a, b) and weight (c, d) values. Raw values areshown in a and c; log-transformed values are shown in b and d. The distributions are less skewed andhave fewer outliers after log transformation.

to examine the potential correlations between the dependent variables and the independent variables. When necessary, post hoc comparisons are made using non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank
tests. Since vowel quality is a categorical variable, its effects were assessed via regression analyses and ANOVA. All statistical calculations were computed using R (R Development Core Team,
1993).

3 Results and Discussion

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3.1 Voiced Obstruents
Figure 4 illustrates the effects of voiced obstruents on (log-transformed) size
and weight values. The linear regression lines show that the correlations are positive. The positive correlations are significant for both size and weight, as revealed
by non-parametric Spearman correlation analyses (ρ = 0.25, p < 0.001 and ρ = 0.28,
p < 0.001). These results support the hypothesis that in Japanese Pokémon names,
voiced obstruents imply largeness and heaviness. This conclusion is consistent withprevious studies of the images of voiced obstruents in Japanese (Hamano, 1986;
Kawahara and Shinohara, 2012; Shinohara and Kawahara, 2016; Shinohara et al.,2016), but offer the very first quantitative support for this intuition using a large
natural corpus of existing names. The results are also consistent with the frequency
code hypothesis (Ohala, 1984, 1994), in which sounds with low frequency should beperceived as large: since voiced obstruents are characterized by low frequencies inJapanese – closure voicing, low f0 and F1 (Kawahara, 2006) – they should invoke“large” images.6
Figure 5 illustrates the average number of voiced obstruents in Pokémon names
for each evolution level, with the error bars representing 95% confidence intervals. We
observe that the more evolved a Pokémon character is, the more voiced obstruents its
name contains on average. The Spearman correlation coefficient between the evolution
level and the number of voiced obstruents is 0.22, which is significant at the p < 0.01
level. Post hoc comparisons using a non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test showthat all the differences between the adjacent evolution levels are significant at the p <0.001 level as well. Indeed then, the more voiced obstruents a Pokémon name contains,the more likely it is used for a more evolved Pokémon.
We further explored the effects of voiced obstruents on evolution by comparing each Pokémon character pair before and after its evolution, e.g. ɡoosu (evolution
level = 0) versus ɡoosuto (evolution level = 1) and ɡoosuto (evolution level = 1) versus
ɡenɡaa (evolution level = 2). For each pair, we coded whether the number of voiced
obstruents increased, decreased, or stayed constant after the evolution. The observed
distributions were compared to a null hypothesis in which the 3 changes occur withequal probability (= 33.3%) using a χ2 test, followed by residual analyses. The resultsappear in Table 1.
The number of voiced obstruents stayed constant about half of the time. More
importantly, we observed that decreasing the number of voiced obstruents between preand post-evolution Pokémon pairs is less likely than expected by chance. This analysis
provides further support to the conclusion that voiced obstruents tend to be associatedwith Pokémon characters with a higher evolution level.
Table 2 shows a correlation vector between the number of voiced obstruentson the one hand and various strength parameters on the other. It demonstrates thatthe number of voiced obstruents exhibits a significant correlation with HP, attack,defense, special attack, special defense, but not with speed. The lack of significant
correlation with speed is particularly interesting – in the actual world, objects thatare large and heavy tend to move slowly, and therefore voiced obstruents in names
may represent something that moves slowly (see also Saji et al., 2013, for a related
observation in Japanese); this effect may have cancelled out the general effects ofvoiced obstruents indicating strengths, as observed in the other parameters. This
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An anonymous reviewer pointed out an interesting alternative hypothesis. In the Japanese orthographic
system, voiced obstruents are represented as the combination of the signs for corresponding voiceless obstruents and an orthographic diacritic, which is 2 dots placed at the right top corner (た = /ta/ vs. だ = /da/;か = /ka/ vs. が = /ɡa/). In this sense, the reviewer suggests that “voiced stops and fricatives are essentially‘evolved’ versions of basic kana, as (in most cases) they are the voiceless kana plus the voicing marker.” In
this view, voiced obstruents are literally bigger than voiceless obstruents in the Japanese orthographic system.
Teasing apart this hypothesis from the frequency code hypothesis would be relatively simple: to explore
languages that do not have this diacritic system, such as English. The frequency code hypothesis, which isessentially based on psychoacoustics, predicts that the association between voiced obstruents and largenessshould hold universally; the orthography-based explanation predicts that it only holds in languages that havean orthographic system like Japanese. On this note, see Newman (1933) and Shinohara and Kawahara (2016)
who have shown that English and Mandarin speakers, respectively, associate voiced obstruents with theimage of largeness. Testing the effects of voiced obstruents in Pokémon names in other languages would help
us address these 2 alternatives as well.

Color version available online

2Size, log m

1

0

–1

–2

0

a

1

2

3

Number of voiced obstruents

Weight, log kg

5.0

2.5

Fig. 4. The effects of voiced
obstruents on size (a) andweight (b). The size and weight

0.0

–2.5

b

0

1
2
Number of voiced obstruents

3values are log-transformed (thebase = e). The linear regression
line is superimposed, with theshaded area representing the
95% confidence intervals. The
means in each condition are
shown as white dots. The
strengths and significance ofthe linear correlation are tested
by a non-parametric Spearman
rank-based correlation test.

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lack of correlation between the number of voiced obstruents and speed indicatesthat the sound symbolic patterns which we are observing in Pokémon names is not
random, but something that makes sense given the natural observation that thoseanimals that are large and heavy generally do not move fast. Except for speed, however, the presence (and its number) of voiced obstruents makes Pokémon characters
generally stronger.

Average number of voiced obstruents

1.0

0.5

Fig. 5. The average numbersof voiced obstruents containedin Pokémon names for each
evolution level. The error bars
represent 95% confidence
intervals. Numbers = 16, 368,
251, 81. The number is small
for the “–1” category, because
it represents baby Pokémon
characters, which are not very
common.

0–1

01
Evolution levels

2

Table 1. Comparison between pairs of pre- and post-evolution Pokémon characters

Increase
Decrease
Constant
Total

Numbers

Skew

120 (35%)
48 (14%)177 (51%)345

ns↓ (p < 0.001)↑ (p < 0.001)

An illustrative example for each category: “increase”: karakara (0) → ɡaraɡara (2); “decrease”:
kibaɡo (2) → onondo (1); “constant”: riɡuree (1) → oobemu (1).

Table 2. A correlation vector between the number of voiced obstruents and various strength parame-tersρ
p valueHP

AttackDefenseSpecial attack

Special defense

Speed

0.12
< 0.010.21< 0.001

0.15< 0.001

0.10< 0.010.11< 0.01

0.05
0.18

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The first row represents Spearman rank-based coefficients ρ. The second row shows their p values. HP,
hit point.

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2Size, log m

1

0

–1

–2

2

a

3

4

5

6

Mora counts

Weight, log kg

5.0

2.5

0.0

–2.5

b

2

3

4
Mora counts

5

6

Fig. 6. The effects of mora
counts on the size (a) andweight (b) values. The white
dots represent the means ineach condition. The positive
correlations are significant at
the p < 0.001 level, evenexcluding the 2-mora and6-mora conditions.

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3.2 Mora Counts
Figure 6 shows the correlation between the mora counts on the one hand, andsize and weight values on the other. It demonstrates that the higher the mora counts(i.e., the longer the name), the larger and heavier the Pokémon character is. The positive correlations are both significant (ρ = 0.36, p < 0.001 and ρ = 0.34, p < 0.001).
There are only 2 data points for 2 moras and 6-mora conditions; even excluding

5

Average number of moras

4

3

2

1

Fig. 7. The average number ofmora counts for each evolution
level. Pairs that are potentiallyrelated by (quasi-)morphological derivation are eliminated.
The total number is 322.

0
–1

0
1
Evolution levels

2

Table 3. A within-Pokémon comparison between pre- and postevolution Pokémon in terms of mora

countsIncrease
Decrease
Constant
Total

Numbers

Skew

166 (48%)
20 (6%)
159 (46%)345↑ (p < 0.001)↓ (p < 0.001)↑ (p < 0.001)

An illustrative example for each category: “increase”: hi-m-ba-su (4) → mi-ru-ka-ro-su (5);“decrease”: ku-nu-ɡi-da-ma (5) → fo-re-to-su (4); “constant”: ra-ru-to-su (4) → ki-ru-ri-a (4).

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these 2 conditions, the correlations remain significant (ρ = 0.35, p < 0.001 andρ = 0.34, p < 0.001). These results confirm our impressionistic observation during
the data-mining stage that Pokémon characters with longer names are heavier andlarger.
Figure 7 illustrates the average number of moras in the Pokémon names for each
evolution level. We observed that the more evolved a Pokémon character is, the moremoras its name contains. The Spearman correlation coefficient is 0.38, which is significant at the p < 0.001 level. Post hoc comparisons with the non-parametric Wilcoxon
test show that all adjacent evolution levels are significantly different in terms of theirmora counts at the p < 0.001 level.
Table 3 shows a within-Pokémon comparison before and after evolution in termsof mora counts. Just like voiced obstruents, the probability of decreasing mora counts
after evolution is lower than expected by chance. We observe that about half of thetime, the mora counts increase after evolution. The likelihood of the mora counts staying constant is also higher than chance level. These are due to the fact that “the decrease
category” is significantly underrepresented.
Overall, the analyses so far have shown that evolved Pokémon names are generally longer. One objection that may be raised against this conclusion is that thisresult may not have to do with phonological length, but instead with morphologicalcomplexity. In some Pokémon pairs, the postevolution characters are expressed via
quasi-affixation: ri-za-a-do → ri-za-a-do-n, in which the final /n/ could be considered as a Pokémon-specific suffix (it is not an existing suffix in Japanese). In order toaddress this morphological complexity hypothesis, we eliminated all pairs that could
be considered as morphologically related, even when the observed “affixes” do not
actually exist in Japanese. The results appear in Figure 9 – the pattern remained thesame, the more evolved Pokémon characters tend to have longer names, although
the Spearman correlation coefficient became slightly lower in this analysis (ρ =0.32, p < 0.001).7
Another reason to consider that phonological length, rather than – or at least, in
addition to – morphological complexity, plays a role in influencing naming of preand post-evolution Pokémon names comes from a nonce word experiment reported
in Kawahara and Kumagai (in press). In that study, within each trial, the participants
were presented with a pair of Pokémon characters (like the one in Fig. 2) and were
provided with 2 unrelated nonce words like he-na-ro-ho (4 moras) and no-shi-yo-hoya (5 moras). The results showed that the participants were more likely to associate
the longer nonce word names with the post-evolution Pokémon characters. Since thestimuli were all nonce words and the stimulus pairs were not related by morphological derivation in any sense, this result cannot be explained in terms of morphologicalcomplexity.
Turning to the relationship between mora counts and strength, Table 4 shows
the correlation vector between the number of moras on the one hand and the strengthparameters on the other. It shows that all the correlations are significant at the p < 0.001
level. The results show that the longer the name, the stronger the Pokémon character isin every parameter.
One remaining question is how general this sound symbolic8 “longer-is-stronger” relationship is – is it specific to Pokémon names, or specific to proper names,
or more generally operative in natural languages? One relevant observation comesfrom the spell names in the Dragon Quest series – a nationally renowned roleplaying game9 – which follow the same “longer-is-stronger” principle as theSound Symbolism in Pokémon

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7
The relationship between mora counts on the one hand and size and weight on the other remained stable,
after excluding (quasi)-morphologically related pairs, as shown in Figure 8. The Spearman correlations are
0.24 for size and 0.34 for weight, both significant at the p < 0.001 level.
8
It has been asked whether “sound symbolic” is the right term to refer to this association, as “sound symbolism” most often refers to meanings associated with individual segments, rather than prosodic shapes orlengths. While we agree that this association may not be a prototypical example of what has been discussed
under the rubric of “sound symbolism,” it is nevertheless a quantitative “iconic” relationship between soundshapes and meanings. We could potentially use the term “phonesthetics” or “quantitative iconic soundmeaning relationships”. However, since the term “sound symbolism” is well known in the literature now, we
keep using this term in this paper.
9
See the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest and the official website (in Japanese)
at http://www.jp.square-enix.com/archive/dq/ for details.

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1

0

–1

2

a

3
Mora counts

Weight, log kg

5.0

2.5

0.0

b

2

3
Mora counts

Fig. 8. The correlations
between mora counts and size(a) and weight (b). Pairs thatare potentially related by(quasi-)morphological derivation are eliminated.

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Pokémon naming: in a series of 4 spells related to fire, me-ra (2 moras) is theweakest, me-ra-mi (3 moras) next, me-ra-zo-o-ma (5 moras) next, and me-ra-ɡai-ya-a (6 moras) is the strongest; similarly, ɡi-ra (2 moras) becomes be-ɡi-ra-ma(4 moras) when it gets stronger, and then be-ɡi-ra-ɡo-n (5 moras), and then ɡi-raɡu-re-i-do (6 moras) when it is strongest. The same can be said for i-o (2 moras),i-o-ra (3 moras), i-o-na-zu-n (5 moras) and i-o-ɡu-ra-n-de (6 moras), although

5

Average number of moras

4

3

2

1

Fig. 9. The average number of

0
–1

0
1
Evolution levels2

mora counts for each evolution
level. Pairs that are potentiallyrelated by (quasi-)morphological derivation are eliminated.
The total number is 322.

Table 4. A correlation vector between the number of moras and strength parametersρ
p valueHP

AttackDefenseSpecial attack

Special defense

Speed

0.26
< 0.001

0.27< 0.001

0.29< 0.001

0.20< 0.001

0.25< 0.001

0.15< 0.001

HP, hit point.

there are exceptions to this “longer-is-stronger” principle, too; e.g. be-ho-ma (3moras) is stronger than be-ho-i-mi (4 moras), and ma-hya-do (3 moras) is stronger
than hya-da-i-n (4 moras). Kawahara (2017) systematically studied this correlation between the levels of each spell and the length of their names in the Dragon
Quest series, and found a positive correlation (ρ = 0.67, p < 0.001), as shown in
Figure 10.10
An anonymous reviewer pointed out that this “longer-is-stronger” principle may
be a specific case of what is more generally known as “iconicity of quantity” inSound Symbolism in Pokémon

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10
Unlike Pokémon evolution, most if not all cases of Dragon Quest spell names involve quasi-morphologicalderivation. However, we still observe that the morphological complexity is not all there is to it. For example,
the level 2 fire spell is mera#mi (# = a morphological boundary), whereas the level 3 spell is mera#zo-o-ma,
in which the latter “suffix” is longer (1 mora vs. 3 moras). The level 4 “suffix” is ɡa-i-ya-a, which is longer
than the level 3 suffix zo-o-ma. The same pattern holds for the comparison among beɡira#ma (level 2) versuss beɡira#ɡo-n (level 3) versus ɡira#ɡu-re-e-do (level 4), and io#ra (level 2) versus io#na-zu-n (level 3)
versus io#ɡu-ra-n-de (level 4). We suspect that the sound symbolic “longer-is-stronger” principle is at work,
even when spell name levels are expressed via morphological complexity as well.

Color version available online

7

Mora counts

6
5
4
3

10. The relationshipbetween the levels of the spells
and the mora counts of theirnames in the Dragon Quest
series. Based on Kawahara(2017).
Fig.

2
1

2

3

4

Spell levels

5

6

7

the literature on the role of iconicity in grammar (Haiman, 1980, 1985). An example of quantitative iconicity includes comparatives and superlatives in Latin (e.g.,long(-us) “long” < long-ior “long-er” < long-issim(-us) “long-est”). More generally, Haiman (1980, p. 528) suggests that “generally speaking, the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of adjectives show a gradual increase in the numberof phonemes.” Many languages, including Japanese, express plurality, repetition,and intensification using reduplication (a Japanese example: yama “mountain” andyama-yama “mountains”), which would also be an example of quantitative iconicity (Haiman, 1980). Dingemanse et al. (2015) cite an example from Japanese andSiwu in which vowel lengthening expresses “long-ness.” In short, there may be somecases in natural languages in which the “longer-is-stronger” principle is at work.
Exploring the relationship between the current finding in Pokémon naming and thegeneral quantitative iconicity patterns in natural languages offers an interesting line
for future research.

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3.3 Multiple Regression Analyses
Having established the effects of voiced obstruents and those of mora counts,
we need to address an important question. Given that the effects of both voiced
obstruents and mora counts are present, could it be the case that we obtained significant results of both factors, because a longer word is more likely to containvoiced obstruents? In other words, are the effects of voiced obstruents and mora
counts independent of one another? In order to address this question, multiple
regression analyses were run. The independent variables were log-transformed
weight, log-transformed size, evolution level, and total strength (the sum of allstrength parameters except for speed). The dependent variables were the numberof voiced obstruents and mora counts, and their interaction. Table 5 summarizes
the results.
In all the regression models, the effects of voiced obstruents and those of mora
counts are highly significant, but none of the interaction effects are. These results show

Table 5. The results of multiple regression analyses

dfF

p value

WeightVoiced obstruentsMora counts
Interaction

1, 712
1, 712
1, 712

53.2
71.7
<1

< 0.001< 0.001
0.82

Size
Voiced obstruentsMora counts
Interaction

1, 712
1, 712
1, 712

36.7
75.1
<1

< 0.001< 0.001
0.69

Evolution
Voiced obstruentsMora counts
Interaction

1, 712
1, 712
1, 712

42.3
99.3
2.7

< 0.001< 0.001
0.10

Strength
Voiced obstruentsMora counts
Interaction

1, 712
1, 712
1, 712

23.7
69.9
1.9

< 0.001< 0.001
0.16

The effects of voiced obstruents and mora counts are significant, but their interaction terms are not.

that the effects of voiced obstruents and those of mora counts independently hold. In
other words, the effects of voiced obstruents are present, regardless of the number ofmoras that a particular Pokémon name contains.
3.4 Vowel Quality
We now turn to the analysis of vowels. Since Pokémon names differ substantiallyin their length (recall section 3.2), we analyzed the effects of vowels in initial syllables.
We know from the previous psycholinguistic research that initial segments and/or syllables play an important role in speech perception and processing (Browman, 1978;
Brown and MacNeill, 1966; Cole, 1973; Marslen-Wilson, 1975; Mattys and Samuel,2000; Nooteboom, 1981), and that psycholinguistic prominence may play a significant
role in shaping the phonology of human languages (Becker et al., 2012; Beckman,
1998; Hawkins and Cutler, 1988; Smith, 2002).
Figure 11a and b presents the distribution of log-transformed size and weight,
broken down by initial vowels.11 We observe in Figure 11a that there are no large differences among the 5 vowels (the means: /a/ = −0.05; /o/ = −0.11; /e/ = −0.02; /u/ =−0.14; /i/ = −0.21), although 2 high vowels (/u/ and /i/) show the 2 smallest values.
To assess the significance of height and backness on size, since vowel quality is nota numerical variable, a regression analysis was run with log-transformed size as thedependent variable and height (high vs. nonhigh) and backness (back vs. front), as
well as their interaction, as independent variables. The results were that height wasSound Symbolism in Pokémon

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11Japanese has a short versus long contrast in vowels (as well as consonants). It seems natural to hypothesizethat long vowels imply something heavier and larger. See the Appendix for analyses of long vowels and longconsonants.

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2Size, log m

1

0

–1

–2
a

o

a

e

u

i

Initial vowel

Weight, log kg

5.0

2.5

0.0

–2.5
a

b

o

e
Initial voweluiFig. 11. The distribution ofsize (a) and weight (b) (log-transformed), broken down byinitial vowels. Red dots represent the means.

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significant (t(713) = −2.06, p < 0.05), but not backness (t(712) = −0.74, ns) or theinteraction (t(711) = 1.07, ns).
A similar tendency is observed in terms of weight (Fig. 11b). The differences are
not substantial, but high vowels tend to be associated with smaller weights (the means:/a/ = 3.31; /o/ = 3.19; /e/ = 3.29; /u/ = 3.00; /i/ = 2.92). A regression analysis showsthat height was nearly significant (t(713) = −1.80, p = 0.07), but not backness (t(712) =Average evolution levels

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
a

o

e
Initial voweluiFig. 12. The average evolution levels for each vowel quality in initial syllables.

−0.17, ns) or the interaction (t(711) = 0.43, ns). A model without the interaction termshows a significant effect of height (t(713) = −2.49, p < 0.05), which shows that somevariability of height was soaked up by the interaction term.12 All in all, it seems justified to conclude that vowel height has a sound symbolic effect in such a way that highvowels represent something smaller and lighter, although its effect size is not very
substantial in the Pokémon naming patterns.
Figure 12 shows the average evolution levels for each type of initial vowel.
It shows the /a/ and /o/ tend to represent more evolved characters, whereas /u/ and/i/ – particularly /i/ – represent less evolved characters, and /e/ represents those inbetween. However, the effect sizes are very small (note that the y-axis scale ranges
from 0 to 0.6), and indeed no significant differences were found in terms of height(t(713) = −0.55, ns), backness (t(712) = 0.72, ns), or their interaction (t(711) =−0.24, ns).
Finally, Figure 13 shows the effects of initial vowels on each strength parameter. No consistent patterns seem to exist, except that /e/-initial names show slightly
high values in special attack, special defense, and speed. /u/ shows values that are
higher than /a/, /o/, and /i/ in terms of special defense. One-way ANOVA was run withstrength parameters as independent variables and vowel type as dependent variables;
HP: F(4, 711) = 1.72, ns; attack: F(4, 711) = 1.75, ns; defense: F(4, 711) = 0.47, ns;
special attack: F(4, 711) = 4.38, p < 0.01; special defense: F(4, 711) = 5.30, p < 0.001;
speed: F(4, 711) = 6.64, p < 0.001. A post hoc test with /a/ as the baseline shows thatSound Symbolism in Pokémon

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12
A model comparison between the two models, one with the interaction term and one without, does notshow the improvement of fit for the more complex model (χ2(1) = 0.39, ns); therefore, we may be justified
to interpret the simpler model, i.e., the one without interaction. Either way, the effect size of vowel height is
not very large.

200

100

200
SpDefense

Defense

HP

200

150
100
50

0

150
100
50

0
a

o

e

u

i

a

Initial vowels

o

e

u

i

a

Initial vowels

o

e

u

i

Initial vowels

160

150

150
150
50

Speed

SpAttack

Attack

120
80

100
50

40

0

0
a

o

e

u

i

Initial vowels

a

o

e

u

i

Initial vowels

a

o

e

u

i

Initial vowels

Fig. 13. The effects of initial vowels on each strength parameter (points). HP, hit point.

/e/ is higher than /a/ in terms of special attack (t(711) = 2.78, p < 0.01), special defense(t(711) = 2.28, p < 0.05), and speed (t(711) = 4.15, p < 0.001). /u/ is higher than /a/ interms of special defense (t(711) = 2.13, p < 0.05). We unfortunately do not have a clear
explanation of these complicated patterns.

4 Conclusion

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In natural languages, sound symbolic relationships hold between sounds andmeanings, although these relationships are only stochastic and not deterministic(i.e., the sound-meaning relationships can be arbitrary; Hockett, 1959; Saussure,1916). Previous studies have shown that sound symbolic patterns are operative innaming patterns of proper names as well (Berlin, 2006; Kawahara and Shinohara,
2012; Köhler, 1947; Perfors, 2004; Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001; Shinohara
and Kawahara, 2013; Shinohara et al., 2016; Sidhu and Pexman, 2015; Wright andHay, 2002; Wright et al., 2005). The current study adds to this body of the literatureon the existence of sound symbolic relationships in proper names, using a new corpus of data.
One advantage of the analysis presented in this paper is the fact that we wereable to conduct statistical and quantitative analyses of sound symbolic patterns, using
Pokémon names as a natural corpus. Japanese speakers do have an impressionistic

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2Size, log m

1

0

–1

–2
0

a

1

2

Number of long vowels

Weight, log kg

5.0

2.5

0.0

–2.5

b

0

1
Number of long vowels

2

Fig. 14. The effects of longvowels on size (a) and weight(b).

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intuition that “voiced obstruents are heavy,” for example, and this intuition has beenreported in some linguistic work (Hamano, 1986; Kawahara, 2015; Kubozono, 1999b).
However, we believe that we are the first to quantitatively test this sound symbolic connection using a natural corpus.
This study on the sound symbolic nature of Pokémon names did not cover
all aspects of Pokémon; for example, all Pokémon characters belong to some“class” (e.g., water, grass, poison, fire, etc.). Some Pokémon characters are also

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2Size, log m

1

0

–1

–2
0

a

1
Number of geminates

Weight, log kg

5.0

2.5

0.0

–2.5

b

0

1
Number of geminates

Fig. 15. The effects of geminates on size (a) and weight
(b).

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specified for their gender (either male or female). Whether the classes and/or
gender are expressed via particular sound symbolic patterns is an interesting topic
for future investigation in the analysis of Pokémon names. Nor has the current
study tested all possible sound symbolic relationships that may be lurking behind
Pokémon naming conventions. For example, place of articulation is something tolook at, given a recent observation that Japanese speakers very often use labialconsonants for names of baby diapers (Kumagai and Kawahara, 2017). Our hope

is that future research will uncover other sound symbolic patterns in Pokémon
names.
Another dimension in which this project can be extended is the analysis of
Pokémon names in languages other than Japanese. Since Pokémon names are translated into many languages, including Chinese, English, French, and Russian, the soundsymbolic study of Pokémon names provides a forum for cross-linguistic comparisons.
We thus invite interested readers to follow-up on the current study.
Another task is to address whether the patterns identified in this paper are merely
facts about the “Pokémon lexicon,” or whether these patterns are internalized by native
speakers of Japanese. Testing this issue requires experimentation using new Pokémon
characters (see Kawahara and Kumagai, in press, for the initial attempt). This experiment has shown that when given a pair of complete nonce words and a pair of pre- andpost-evolution versions of Pokémon as in Figure 2, Japanese speakers tend to associate
those names with voiced obstruents and those names that are longer with the post-evolution Pokémon. We also invite other researchers to test the same issue with speakers
with different language backgrounds.

AppendixLong Vowels and Geminates
It has been asked multiple times whether long vowels and long consonants (a.k.a. geminates)
would affect size and weight of Pokémon characters. Figure 14 represents the effects of long vowels
on size and weight. There is a slight positive correlation between the number of long vowels andsize (top, ρ = 0.09, p < 0.05), but not between the number of long vowels and weight (bottom, ρ =0.05, ns).
Figure 15 illustrates the effects of the presence of geminates on size and weight (there were nonames in which there is more than 1 geminate). Both in terms of size and weight, the correlation isnegative, and the correlation between the presence of geminates and weight is significant (ρ = −0.06,
ns for size; ρ = −0.09, p < 0.05 for weight). We do not have a clear explanation of why the presence ofgeminates would lead to lower weight.

Acknowledgments
This paper grew out of a seminar that the first author gave at Tokyo Metropolitan University
in September 2016. We thank the students who participated in that seminar. Some of the analyses
in this paper were used in introductory phonetics classes at International Christian University, Keio
University, Kwansei Gakuin University, Otsuma University, and Tokyo Metropolitan University;
this paper was also presented as invited lectures at Keio University, Meio University, Seoul
International Phonology Conference, and Tokyo Institute for Advanced Studies of Language, where
we received interesting feedback. We thank 2 anonymous Phonetica reviewers, who provided
detailed comments on a previous version of this paper, as well as Sharon Inkelas, Darya Kavitskaya,
Yasuyo Minagawa, Stephanie Shih, and Alan Yu who provided helpful comments on this generalproject. We are grateful to Donna Erickson for proofreading the manuscript. The remaining errors
are ours.

Disclosure Statement

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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