For most of my life I thought it was normal that Vladimir Nabokov’s name was always ink-blue and ivory, that A is a lipstick-scarlet letter, that the word opium is the color of a pomegranate and N was the same brown as the word November. That a song could smell like tobacco and vetiver and bitter orange, a taste so thick that you could feel it smeared across your tongue. I thought that everyone saw the alphabet laid out in front of them in a wild array of hues, with the more vivid colors at the beginning and the deepest colors living in the middle, then finally fading out towards blacks and grays. After all, if other people didn’t see the letters like that, then why did they make refrigerator magnets all those different colors? I thought it was such a common thing that nobody ever bothered to talk about it.
I was thirteen, reading A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, when I first came across the word “synesthesia,” which literally means “union of senses.” Synesthesia is a rare condition where you taste words, for example, or smell colors or see sounds or personify numbers: a mixing of the senses in any number of permutations. It’s so rare that my word processor doesn’t recognize it. Synesthesia can be a side effect of hallucinogens like LSD or the result of a head trauma, but some people are born with what’s called developmental synesthesia. At the time, I didn’t understand that what I was reading applied to me, which apparently is common with developmental synesthetes. This was the way I had always lived, I never knew there was another way to experience the world.
My mother once told me a story about my father. He grew up one of six children in a middle-class family, wildly neglected to the point that for most of his childhood, he had been unable to see clearly and had suffered from terrible headaches. He needed glasses. After years, once his parents finally realized what was going on, they took him to the optometrist and all of a sudden he could see clearly. For the first time in his life, things started making sense. He had never thought to ask about why his vision was so bad. He hadn’t known it was bad, he thought that was the way everybody saw.
The last thing I needed at thirteen was another thing to make me different. Ten years later, my age is raspberry, a color created by the combination of the bright red 2 and the hot pink 3, and I have just begun to realize that perhaps my view of the world is not entirely normal.
My initial self-diagnosis is that I have what’s called color-grapheme synesthesia: seeing letters, words, numbers, and other linguistic symbols as colors. It’s one of the most common types of synesthesia and each synesthete has their own color-symbol associations. I’m not sure that’s all for me, however, since emotions, scents, and songs are also colors and sometimes songs are also smells. It’s not that I see the words in color so much as perceive them that way. I can see the difference between writing with a black pen and a red pen. But there is one color that I see, the real color, and then there is the projected color, the one that I suppose lives in my “mind’s eye.”
All of a sudden, there are so many questions that need to be answered? What makes my brain different, and why? Where did these color associations come from? How can an involuntary thought be as real as something that I’m actually seeing right in front of me? How could I spend my whole life not knowing that this was a weird thing?
It doesn’t help that our language is rife with synesthetic phrasing. A sharp laugh, the bright notes of citrus in a perfume: these are not things that one literally senses. A laugh can’t be literally sharp, and the smell of citrus doesn’t emit light, but we still use and understand these phrases. There also are commonly known cultural associations with colors: blue is relaxing, black is for mourning, pink is girlish and sweet. Why? What is the difference between these things and feeling that depression is a pompous, hateful lavender-gray?
I’m just beginning to understand how little I understand. There are studies at universities I’d like to participate in, a mailing list I need to get on, a yearly conference to look into, and so many books on the subject I need to read. I’ve started writing out charts with my different color associations, which is a much more elaborate system than I ever realized. I’ve also started using my color-number associations to memorize pi. I figure if I’m going to have an identity crisis that questions the very nature of reality and perception, I might as well get a fun party trick out of it.
So, who wants to know what color their name is?
Me! I do! My name’s Esther.
I had an acquaintance at music school who had perfect pitch thanks to his synesthesia; we were all jealous. Now I am also jealous of you and how you see the world.
Mary Bichner, a local musician I absolutely adore, has this too! Here’s some color-coded sheet music.
I knew someone like that too! Whenever we’d ask him to describe how he figured out pitches, he’d be like, “Well, A flat is yellow, and G is purple, so it’s pretty simple…”
Scriabin, considered by some (me) to be the coolest composer ever, also has this, and made an absolutely sweet color-coded piano for it… Also there’s this jazz guitarist, Miles Okazaki, who makes these insane color graphs of different musical stuff – here’s some of his graphs: http://milesokazaki.com/diagrams.php [spreading the good word]
Can’t be, A-flat is violet and G is green. Always has been for me, anyway.
To me, you’re green, with some grays. (greys.) But not a garish kind of way–more minty and silver. E isn’t super strong, but the S is very minty-green (and the tints do layer in letter order for me). Also Esther feels smooth and slick and not loud and not at all fuzzy.
That’s awesome! I was hoping terribly I’d be green since it is quantifiably the best colour.
This was wonderful to read! I suppose you’re classified as right brained when you take those type of tests (:
My name is Diana! What color am I?
I have another question, too, about real colors and projected colors. If you look at a written word, then bring up that memory later, which color is it? Does it depend on the context (giant logo vs. text in a book)? Is this a nonsense question?
Diana is sparkly blue to me.
Diana! Oh, that’s complicated. So many vying equally-strong letters layering there. The D is purple, but the combination with the others makes it more red. But not a deep, dark color. Diana is very bright and happy and light, almost airy. But not at all fluffy.
Diana is a dark, almost-black blue. Very dignified.
I have graphical synesthesia too, and like you, didn’t realize it for years, partly because my mom and siblings have it. I remember having a conversation with my mom about what colors belonged to which days of the week. I remember reading somewhere that people with graphical synesthesia often have overlap the colors for certain letters and numbers (“A” is almost always red, for example). For me, its:
A – Red
B – Yellow
C – White
D – Black
E – Green
F – Green
G – Light Yellow
H – Blue
I – White
J – Darker Blue
K – Pink
L – White
M – Orange
N – Peach
O – White
P – Mauve-ish?
Q – Black
R – Red
S – Yellow
T – Blue
U – Black
V – Purple
W – Brown
X – Blue
Y – Black
Z – Orange
I don’t have the scents and smells kind, but I think I do have spatial sequence synesthesia, where you see numbers and dates as occupying points in space. I can’t think of numbers or dates at all without immediately picturing an arc with each number (or month, etc.) in sequence, represented by its name. Do other people do this? I can’t fathom how I would conceptualize math or time without it.
Weird! A is yellow for me.
Yup, I have spatial sequence synesthesia as well– The year goes counter-clockwise around a giant circle, and numbers start straight forward and then make a left turn at 20 and head out in that direction. Doesn’t help me much with math though.
Your letters, of course, are mostly wrong. L is OBVIOUSLY yellow 😛
I have this exact thing with dates and numbers! My year is also a counter clockwise circle, but smushed, so there’s no space in the middle. January first is right in the middle on the right side, august takes up the whole left curve, so it’s obviously not a properly proportioned calendar. Some months are much bigger than others, and they have corresponding colors. My numbers go straight across until 10, then go straight up until 20, then they take a right turn, but it’s at a continually upward angle.
L is so, so yellow. I am very yellow.
Whoa. P is totally mauve-ish for me, too. W’s always been a really rich purple, though.
This is very cool, because my name spelled out is green white white yellow, which would combine to make the bright spring avocado green that I’m drawn to. Fun!
A is red for me too. B is blue and C is yellow. I wonder how many of these primary colour-to-ABC associations are influenced by children’s alphabet books, etc.
I think I have, like, partial synesthesia? Some letters are coloured and some aren’t. Single-digit numbers are, but multiple-digits sometimes aren’t, or sometimes are different than the combination of their individual digits. Days of the week have colours, and some months too, but those are usually influenced by what number month they are or what number their name is derived from (7 and September are both brown, 6 and June are both green, 5 and May are both red, etc.). I definitely see chunks of time as visual objects too. Some words have textures.
I think this is still synesthesia, though it makes it difficult to confirm it with traditional testing. Some letters are multiply layered for me, which makes the words at times more muddled (and other times clearer, since some letters are also stronger than others and take over the word color). But what they have in common are really feelings. It’s the feelings that have colors, really, not the letters themselves. (I also have really no number colors, but numbers do have strong even vs. odd feelings/moods for me.) The overlap does mean that while my synesthesia-aided spelling is almost perfect, my ability to recall words on the tip of my tongue is really poor. “It starts with a K, or an H, or maybe a P.”
You have so much more black and white than me! Which I’m glad about, because white is pretty unpleasant/evil, so I’d rather not see it in words very much.
FEELINGS and colours and letters! Yes! I am not synaesthetic, to my eternal disappointment, but days do have colours and everything, everything has a feeling to it, a personality. Two, for instance, is so terrible a number that wherever possible I will write it out in words to avoid that beaky little swan and its even-ness.
I have always been so jealous of this!
I would also like to know. My name is Corinne!
Yellow! For the C.
Corinne is yellow and ivory with a smooth surface and rounded spikes.
this is so interesting to me because three people have said yellow. And when I tried to imagine what color my name would be before I asked, I thought yellow! STRANGE COINCIDENCES!
Your name is a mid-tone spring green that lightens to greenish-yellow towards the end. It’s much prettier than I’m describing it.
I vividly remember telling my friend’s mom in preschool how O was my favorite letter, because it was red, my favorite color. In terms of color associations, there’s been some research that shows black and white are assigned to common letters, like vowels. True for me: S is white and I is black.
That is very interesting!
I love words and always thought synthesia was really cool. It’s so great you want to learn more and help the advancement of the understanding of synthesia; I’d love to keep hearing about your progress and what you discover!
Esther is kind of a neon yellow with a lilac shadow? Haha. Diana is auburn. And Corinne is a dark yellow.
As for Diana’s question: it definitely depends on the context of whatever word I’m remembering. Like, if I think about the Coca-Cola logo, it’s more like an image than words, so it’s always that white lettering on a red background. But text out of a book, when I remember that, would definitely be in the different colors that go with the words or letters. (I used to be able to ace spelling tests this way.)
That is. SO INTERESTING.
Yes. I am (= was actually in one small bee) a spelling champion. I didn’t even realize it was because of the synesthesia (partly because I didn’t even realize synesthesia was a thing until my 20s) until I went to Hawaii, and ALL THE WORDS ARE THE SAME COLOR and suddenly I couldn’t spell anything or remember the names of anything. It was horrible, and a “this is what it’s like to learn languages for everyone else??” moment.
I’ve been fascinated by synesthesia since I first learned it was a thing. I’d love to know what color my name is, please! It’s Melanie.
Hey, me too & me too!
-the other Melanie
*Melanie high five*
Melanie is powder blue.
Like Joe Biden’s eyes?
(I’m watching the State of the Union. It’s not like I think about his eyes all the time.)
(Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Melanie is red, but kind of a tasty, shallow red. Like jelly beans, or candle wax in a shallow bowl. That texture.
“jelly bean red” is such a powerful descriptor. 🙂 Thanks
For me, sequences of numbers or months or days of the week make shapes, like an architecture made out of numbers, etc. Also, flavors have shapes–roasted garlic is round, citrus is pointy, etc. I think this is fairly common though.
Yes! That’s what things are like for me, too. I always tell people I don’t like my last name because it’s too round; weeks looks like triangles to me; years are egg-shaped. I think the whole shapes-of-words thing helps me with my writing, too, because if you put all the shapes next to each other (a sentence) you want them to look pleasing and balanced.
I have grapheme synesthesia! I didn’t realize it was unusual until I was about nine and my brother, who also has synesthesia, asked if I saw numbers and letters in colors, and I said, “Well, obviously.” Our parents had no idea what we were talking about.
For me, my name is magenta with notes of yellow and blue. In a word, the consonants are more prominent, and the vowels fade. Numbers take on different characteristics in combination–for example, 2 on its own is a brighter yellow, but in front of another number it’s more of a straw color.
I do find that I navigate the world a lot using color, and I also use color to memorize stuff.
“In a word, the consonants are more prominent, and the vowels fade.”– yes, agree.
My numbers retain their colours even in combination, which made learning arithmetic interesting– 7 (green) times 3 (red) = 21 (blue and white)? How does that work.
WHAT COLOR AM I
Mallory is reddish-pink then Ortberg is white (for me, another color-grapheme synaesthete.)
What I’d like to know is if Melis has different colors than Mallory Ortberg.
Oh very much. They’re both red, but such different reds. The letters all modify each other and/or layer with each other. Melis, with the E in there right up against the M, is… also shallow, like Melanie above. It’s the wrong word, but I don’t know how else to describe it. Not shallow like a person, shallow like a bowl of water? It’s hard to say other than “it’s like E.” And Mallory is much rounder, and matte/flatter red, kind of a mellow medium red color and shape.
It is so hard to describe this, you guys. Am I the only one whose colors are so layered with shapes and textures?
Oh definitely! Your name is much lighter blue because it has that white ‘i’ in there.
“M” is dark blue, but lightened by the two middle “L”s, so…kind of like dark seafoam. (From another synaesthete, who’s jealous that your name looks like you’ve already taken to the sea and are enjoying it immensely.)
Primary Crayola colors. Blue and green and red blocks tumbled on a linoleum classroom floor, at recess when the light’s off.
Okay, then, that answers my question! I’m not the only one whose colors have shapes and textures.
Solid burgundy.
Mallory is a blue name. The M is ink blue, and the ‘l’s are cobalt. Ortberg is orange, obviously haha.
I want to know! A friend with synesthesia once told me Jaya was bright red and yellow. What is it to you?
To me, Jaya is dark blue.
First syllable is baby blue, second syllable is a shimmery pink. The blue kind of overshadows the pink a bit, or the pink mixes in somehow such that it’s overall a purply-blue (for me).
J is so purple, and so rich! And the rest just makes it very happy. Happy purple is your color.
Ahhhhh this is all the greatest
Thanks for writing this! I’m not synesthetic myself, but I’ve long been interested in the early 20th-century artists/composers who were inspired by synesthesia (whether they had it or not): Schoenberg, Kandinsky, Scriabin, etc.
It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like to truly perceive a written word as both the color it is and some other color. Does it ever get confusing? I’m thinking of the Psych 101 experiment where you see the word “red” written in blue type…
There are a lot of varieties of synesthesia, and I can only speak for myself, but usually you don’t literally “see” the word in a different color. It’s more like, the part of your brain that recognizes colors sort of fires and says “something green!” even though you’re looking at regular black type. But if I try to picture the word in my mind, it’s just green. It’s weird to see letters in a mix of colors that aren’t “my” colors, like the alphabet tiles above, but words written in one color of type aren’t confusing.
That’s something people fail to understand about color-grapheme synaesthesia as I experience it, anyway. It’s not as though I hallucinate that words written in black ink are all sorts of colors, although I can sort of mentally project a color onto black text. It’s more that as the author here says, I can perceive that the word “posture” is orange-yellow. The way when you look at someone in their teens you know they are a teenager without having to ask how old they are. It’s an innate property of the word for me.
That’s how it is for me, too.
That is a fantastic explanation, thanks!
Like other commenters, I guess I can see it in my ‘mind’s eye.’ Like the word “eye’ is sort of buttery yellow with a pure-gold sheen, but if I saw it written in green, it wouldn’t bother me.
The strength of it can also vary. My synesthesia mostly comes out when I’m tired, or I’ve been concentrating on something for too long.
This is so cool! What songs do you smell? Is it very specific like burning toast or is it just like oh floral?
And what color is Allison?
My name is Alison but with one L — I wonder if those look different?
Oh that would be neat!
For me, having one L versus two wouldn’t make too much of a difference, but with two Ls, the L color is a bit stronger. (Some letters overshadow others or their colors are stronger than other letters’.)
So Allison and Alison both are sort of white-grey with a bit of green and gold!
Yeah, all the letters matter, but Allison and Alison are very similar. Allison is just a bit brighter. Pinky reddy round hollow brightness, is Allison. With yellow halos, almost.
Reddish-orange almost like a plaid, with strands of olive green and brown.
I am synesthetic too! I experience it most strongly between colors and numbers, but some letters stand out strongly as well (n is green, r is orange, etc), and I associate certain tactile sensations with flavors and scents.
I definitely get the tactile sensations! And perceptions of shapes. I’m so glad someone else does that, because it is really hard to describe so I kind of wasn’t sure it wasn’t just me!
Oh yay! 🙂 So glad it was clear what I was saying (and I get the shapes thing too!) It can be hard to put exactly what I’m experiencing into words that make sense, which is why this was a great read – the part about seeing versus perceiving colors especially resonated with my experience.
This is old, but this by Vilayanur S Ramachandran may help with the feeling weird thing. Among other things, I feel sound, physically, which is mostly cool. Like you, I long assumed that people literally felt music in their bodies – that is the language we use and I’m not entirely sure how people can dance otherwise. Also that bad noises, some machine noise, “harsh” voices and so forth actually hurt.. The biggest indicator of difference was the realisation that it’s not normal for beautiful music to bring about orgasm, however much folk enjoy it.
Synesthesia often runs in families and I find the subject fascinating, but I’ve never quite got up the nerve to ask blood relatives if they experience the same sort of thing…
Out of tune instruments or vocalists make me nauseated and dizzy. I despise amauter [sp?] theatricals.
I have no other musical abilites whatsoever. Bob Dylan makes me especially nauseated and headache-y.
Huh. It never occurred to me until just this second that feeling sounds would be unusual. For me, it’s things that are irregularly percussive – applause, for example – that makes me uneasy and hurts. Unfortunately, so do the timbre of some people’s voices.
Curious! What color is Lauren?
I also had a friend in college who had perfect pitch, and, I think, not-quite-fully-realized synesthesia, if that is a thing?
I’ve met several people with perfect pitch and music-related synesthesia, I think it is pretty common!
I’m a Lauren, too, and it is yellow for me.
Yellow. But muted, like a little brownish and in the shade. The A makes it kind of round but the U counteracts that quite a bit, hence the darker tint.
THIS IS REALLY COOL. And your writing is really evocative, especially in that stunner of an opening paragraph!
This sounds amazing and beautiful to me and I admit I’m not a little jealous of people who have this. I love reading their stories. Thank you for sharing yours.
Ooh, my name is Laura! What color am I?
Like Esther above, I also have a friend with perfect pitch who has synesthesia. I am constantly amazed.
I’m Laura, too! This is my favourite.
Also roundish yellow! But not as muted as Lauren. That N is just so grounded-feeling.
I’m pretty sure I have spatial sequence synesthesia, especially when it comes to time (days/months/years); not so much with straight number sequences. My year always looks like a long oval, with fall months along the longer “top”, winter on the shorter right side, spring on the bottom, summer on the left. They go clockwise. And depending where I am in the year, the oval kind of… radiates out?
So right now, if I were to think of “December” it would be almost immediately to my right; “June” is much farther in front of me and on the left. In May, September would be about “three months-space” directly in front of me, and December would be allll the way diagonal from me, to the right. I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone but me, haha.
it blew my mind when I realized not everyone did this – I can’t imagine not visualizing time spatially.
I have this too!! For me, the year is a circle with January at the top, and June at the bottom. I don’t know how people calculate what month it’s going to be in four months, without visualizing the circle and moving through it.
This is exactly how I visualize a year! The days of the month are also part of the circle. It’s so interesting to read about the different spatial maps other people have.
I just thought of something else: do you guys “see” the 24 day with the same kind of spatial pattern you would see a week or a month with? For me, the times of day are spread out in a line, just like with centuries or numbers. Weeks and months and years (taken discretely) are circles, though.
I know, right? I can’t imagine not seeing color with music. I can’t explain to people why I choose the things I do when I paint an abstract and choose to put a color here, and I know what shape and size the box needs to be and how many more of its kind on the canvas to look good. I have to fill the space and at the same time leave X space.
I have the oval too! Except for me, January is the top left, December is the top right, and there is kind of a gap between. Summer months are stretched flat on the bottom.
Yes yes yes, I have number/day = colour synesthesia, and spatial time & numbers. For me time is like one long row stretching to the right (future) and left (past) where the weekends have bold lines around them, so it’s easy to differentiate the weeks and months and years. All the 10s (20 30 40 etc) also have a bold line around their square (they’re all squares d’uh;-) so it’s easy to add or subtract. Yeey.
ok, this is crazy to me – and it really reminds me of this passage I just read in The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. There is a description of one of the main characters visualizing time and I think it was kind of like this. I wish I could find the part – im at work right now and cant find it online.
I never thought of it as a variety of synesthesia, but I see the calendar year as a vertical row of boxes with January at the top and December at the bottom– but the summer months are looong and the rest of the months are short, so it looks sort of like a hamburger. I also see days of the week as five horizontal boxes, with two longer boxes underneath for the weekend, so when I have to count forward I go clockwise. I don’t think everyone sees it that way, but everyone does picture *something*, right?
Oh, I also grew up singing in choirs and things and I always imagined different notes having colors, depending on how “warm” or “cool” they are– silver/blue for soprano, then gold/amber shifting into warmer red-browns as altos descend into tenors, getting deeper, woodsier browns for the basses. I don’t really *see* it, though– it’s a metaphor, but the ground between those things is tricky.
Nope: I’m color-grapheme synesthetic, but I don’t see number patterns at all. And I love number patterns. I just don’t visualize them. The number line in ovals or folded-over thing is definitely a kind of synesthesia, and it’s a bit rarer than color-grapheme varieties (which affect about 1-2% of the population, I think?).
I always see the year similarly, although mine’s more of a number line that any sort of oval like other people described. I have the sense that “behind” (to the left of) January is December of the previous year, but the rest of they year stretches out infinitely to the right, like an x-axis or a circle lying flat that I’m traveling along the edge of. I’ve never seen it like a clock face the way some people are describing. The reason I made this a reply to this particular comment was that I see the week almost the same, except the weekend for me is in line with the rest of the days, with the same thing of seeing Sunday as both before Monday and after Saturday simultaneously.
/endramble
This is such a searching and enlightening piece.
And I love the fact that the comments have turned into a kaleidoscopic synesthesia party.
SO GOOD. I like the way you explained the difference between what you literally see and what color your mind projects.
It’s great, isn’t it? When I was a teenager, I didn’t think I was experiencing synesthaesia because I didn’t “see” the colors, but “felt” them. I’m so glad she explained it like that, because it makes me feel less of a poser. 😛 (Sadly, I don’t have it as strongly these days.)
My understanding is that some (much rarer) synesthetes do visually see color in some way, but for color associations with graphemes, sounds, emotions, etc., it’s definitely in the mind’s eye. But what I experience is more that the letters have feelings first, and those feelings have colors.
Yes, this especially:
But there is one color that I see, the real color, and then there is the projected color, the one that I suppose lives in my “mind’s eye.”
That so clearly and cogently differentiates it for me.
This is so interesting! I hope you write more about it in the future.
Numbers have personalities to me. Like, 3 is kind and happy, 9 is hateful and suspicious, 7 is uncertain and timid, 8 is sad…. It made math classes very interesting.
I had this vaguely as a child, and I fear it was eventually colored by my inability to memorize the times tables. Poor seven.
I learned basic arithmetic based on my perceived relationships between the different numbers’ personalities. I didn’t feel like I was inventing them as a mnemonic device, it just seemed obvious and inherent that 5 was kind of an annoying tag along to 6, and 6 was nice and big sisterly about it but 7 had a crush on 6 and was irritated by 5’s constant presence, and 6 didn’t care because she found 7 a little too abrasive and she had a crush on 8, but 8 was so cool and mature and was in a serious relationship with sexy, glamorous 9 so he never even really noticed 6 except in a kindly, distant sort of way, etc.
Adorable!
Whoa, me too! For me it came about when I was having trouble memorizing the multiplication tables in grade school. Somehow these number personalities arose in my brain, and then the multiplication facts were just stories involving different “number people”. For example, to solve for 6×7, 6 was a jealous type and 7 was the lover, and putting them together resulted in 42, which had a certain feelings attached to it…I’ve lost all of these associations, so its hard to remember now. But so cool!
7 is totally a bitch.
(says the former math major who totally would create relationships between the numbers to behave their behavior)
(My math rockstar-ness diminished a bit when we started using greek placeholders and literally stopped seeing any numbers, but then the perceptions kind of transferred)
(gamma is a sweet thing)
There’s definitely overlap between the mood or personality assignment thing and the color thing. A lot of synesthetes assign personalities or moral values or moods to letters or numbers along with colors. I don’t have the moral value thing so much (except metallic slate gray, and white, which are both pretty evil with certain textures), but I have strong mood/texture associations with letters, too.
Ordinal linguistic personifiers represent! Six and nine are related, they’re both grifters, and wear orange and green argyle sweater-vests. Seven is a rational, kind blond man in his mid-thirties who wears dark-rimmed glasses. Eight is a fat lady with short, curly brown hair, who wears a red dress with a white lace peter pan collar. Lower numbers are too young for personalities, and higher ones too aloof.
Two, like I wrote above, is THE WORST. I hate two. I hate two and four and most particularly sixteen.
I kind of have this with letters – more when I was a kid. S is mean and sort of specifically mean to T.
me too what color is my name! (Maria)
Also, have you read the book ‘Bitter in the Mouth’ by Monique Truong? It’s great, it’s about synesthesia, and other stuff like adoption/racial identity/queer uncles/etc.
Light, round, almost airy red. Almost fluffy, like clouds!
I wonder, how do the words for colors relate to the actual colors for you? Is “red” a red word?
Only because R is kind of dark red/red-brown for me, but that’s a coincidence.
I associate colors, shape and space (not outer space, but distance) with music and taste with certain colors, until recent years I always thought that was just how people were. I thought everyone saw dandelions explode into the air and dance across a field of various shades of green and yellow as if they were being chased by the wind that was propelling and lifting them through the air. I thought everyone saw/felt dots or bars of color when listening to music. I don’t actually see these things, they are perceived and played on a screen inside my head. It isn’t always a distraction, and music in general aids me in my creative endeavors. Sometimes large noisy crowds and certain types music makes me want to jump out of my skin and run into traffic and I have to get away from it. I will often use music to influence my palette when I paint.
The best way I can describe anything close is to suggest paying attention to when you are hungry and smell pizza or see a fresh green apple and your mouth waters because of the smell and the anticipation of tasting a tart apple. Or you know that a lemon is tart because you have had lemons before so you remember it is sour. That sour taste association stays with you forever. You smell a scent that a person in your life wore and it takes you back 30 years to childhood and you are sitting on your grandfather’s knee and smell the Old Spice. Or you hear a song that played at your high school Valentines dance and you associate that song forever with being 14 and how cold it was that year. Synesthesia is like this but it doesn’t stop with those things, it invades other areas of our mind and is so much of our daily lives that it is who we are, how we see and perceive things just like everyone else, only more colorful and perfectly spaced out.
that explanation is amazing.
This is great. I don’t have this kind of synesthesia and have always wondered what it’s like to, say, feel angry and associate it with the flavor of tuna fish. For example.
Synesthesia is so curious. And I want to know! Jessica Jones!!!!
Purple J’s all over the place! Jessica (my middle name!) is light purple. Light like in the sunlight, and breezy, not like lavender. Jones is rich, round, buoyant purple, like a rubber purple ball in the water. But smoother than rubber.
YOU HAVE NO CLUE HOW HAPPY THIS MAKES ME because purple is my absolutely favorite color, and now I’m dying of happiness. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!
I don’t know if this is truly synesthesia, but I’ve always had a very clear, geometric mental image of time–the year looks like a clock (January at the top, blegh), larger chunks of time go backwards on a line before dropping off to the left. I’ve talked to a few friends who have different mental “images” of time but experience it similarly.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure spatial number lines are a type of synesthesia. I think it’s a bit rarer than color-grapheme varieties.
I visualize the year very clearly, too! It starts as gently-sloped diagonal line, going down to the right, and then it jumps back up from December to January to make a zigzag. I’m not explaining it very clearly, but yeah. Cool! It’s not a strong thing for me at all, but it’s interesting to think about.
This is fascinating! I’m Ehsan – what colour am I please?
Oh wow, that name has almost no color for me. It’s so mild. But it’s a pleasant mild, a bit light gray, a bit gray-green, very soft.
This is a fascinating article. I especially like how you explain that your age is a mashup of the two colors the numbers themselves are, that the number isn’t its own, separate color, but the combination.
I, like everyone else, would love to know what color my name is. It’s Kate. I’d also be curious what color John is, as that’s the name of my love and I’m curious to know how the colors might look together. 🙂
Thank you for being such a good sport – you had to know that “who wants to know what color their name is?” would result in a chorus of us waving our hands frantically.
I”m a Kate too — that’s my given name. Is that yours?
YES! Not Kathleen, Katherine, Catherine, Katelyn… Just Kate.
Ahhh I always have problems with Ks. They’re green! And purple! And gray! Always nice, cool colors. Layers of them, all piled together. T is kind of mixed, too, though warmer. So in Kate, it’s all that, with the round A pulling it together so it’s pretty bright. Almost red? But not red. I’m sorry, this one is really hard for me to describe. Someone else probably has a stronger single-color association for you!
Ooh ooh my name is Rachel! Please tell me what color it is!
Also, I love everything I’ve ever read about synaesthesia, Thank you Gabriella and everyone in the comments, you’ve made my afternoon~
Red. Not a bright M-red, a calm, comfortable red, like a maroon bowling ball, but not quite so perfectly round.
Subtly varying shades of mid-tone blue throughout your entire name. It’s hard to describe. I could easily draw it with colored pencils.
I didn’t realize time/space things could be connected to this but now there’s multiple comments to that effect. I experience time as a pile instead of a line. I’ve tried to explain it to multiple people but I never thought it might be related to synesthesia.
This was so cool! I would also like to know what color my name is (it’s Julia), thank you for entertaining us all with color games.
I don’t think I have synesthesia, but I do see noises if I’m just drifting off to sleep. If I’m falling asleep and there’s a sudden loud noise, like a thump of a bag being set down on the floor above, I’ll see a bright, colored burst of light right as the noise hits. Does anyone else have this?
Also, does anyone else gender numbers? I have a feeling I started doing this as a kid as a game and then never stopped, and now the associations are fixed (3 is masculine, 11 is neutral, 14 is feminine, etc.).
Also purple, like the other Js for me! But that U, it’s so lush. Almost velvety purple, really deep and luxurious.
When I imagined the numbers’ personalities, 3, 6, 9, and any number that started or ended with 3, 6, or 9 were female, and all other numbers were male.
My name is Olivia. I would very much like to know what color my name is!
To me my name is teal blue, so of course that’s my favorite color. I can locate missing objects by remembering a picture in my mind’s eye of where it is. I remembered facts by seeing a picture of them -it’s difficult to describe, but I could see my math problems in 3D; my son can do this too. Until I was in high school I thought everyone could do this. I love that your alphabet has colors. To me it’s the sounds.
What color is my name? (It’s Kate.)
Kates unite!
This is super nifty. My dad claims his colourblindness repaired itself shortly after he got a hearing aid and could “hear” red again, and I for sure hear things in colour and always have.
Electro-chemical signals in chemical soup are _weird_.
My last name is Brown. So now I’m curious; do the names of colours match what y’all see?
Nope! Though like with red, B is a pretty brown color for me. But it’s not like the straight-up brown you’d picture for a brown crayon. It’s deep and round and almost murky-mucky brown. But the word “blue” is also brown (much lighter, and the L is much stronger so it’s layered with yellows, and all very rich and bright).
If you haven’t read it yet, Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia has some great stuff about synesthesia–primarily about music-related synesthesia.
High-school me loved the theory (potentially confirmed, but I can’t find evidence from a cursory Google search) that the Jimi Hendrix song “Bold as Love” is about Jimi’s synesthesia. John Mayer, who is also synesthetic, covered it. Now my feelings about John Mayer are a bit more tempered, but it’s still a cool connection.
Gabrielle, this is amazing, and so beautifully explained. You might enjoy “The Man Who Tasted Shapes,” by Richard Cytowic. It’s an Oliver Sacks-esque look at guess what.
When I was a teenager, I noticed that when I read things, I “felt” colors. I didn’t see them, but passages would stand out as colors and I couldn’t disassociate the two. Jane Eyre was always this deep bordeaux and dark plum, intermingling (I’d never seen any J.E. films until then, and my book had a pale pink cover, so that wasn’t influencing me). The Stranger was painful to read because it was neon orange with a lemon yellow haze. I didn’t notice a lot of stuff in A Separate Peace because it felt watery blue, which was distracting. If a book didn’t have a strong color feel, I also had trouble focusing – either I didn’t get the color because I couldn’t read it, or I couldn’t read it because of the lack of color, I’m not sure which!
Anyway, it was odd and I did always enjoy books more when they had a lot of color in them. Like how I adore the Great Gatsby and it was this absinthe green color to me, but when I reread it a few years ago, I was confused because there wasn’t nearly as much green in the book as I’d thought, just the light and I think one of the women’s dresses or the eyes on the billboard? But there were lots of other colors.
I was taking Effexor as a teenager, and I noticed a few years after I stopped taking it that I no longer felt color while reading long passages, so I guess it was related to the SNRI chemicals. I also don’t know what it was about long passages that caused it – the shape of the words or the page or the pattern of words? an author’s books would be differently colored, but similar, for example. Poems held their color from the shape and rhythm many times. I don’t like sonnets because they were always drab and hard to focus on!
Nowadays, I still feel color when doing letter and word puzzles (crosswords, wordsearches, scrambles, sudoku, magic square…) but only for some graphemes, and I don’t know what that’s about. If I’m trying to find all the 4’s on a Sudoku square, though, I don’t look directly at it, but shift my eyes to the side and try to spot the squares that feel yellow, and it works. (8 is pink and 5 is blue. 2 is green most of the time, but sometimes it’s blue, and 7 can be green as well.) I get the strongest response when doing computer-based puzzles and when I’m tired.
Synesthaesia is fascinating, and also in the way that many of us seem to have been influenced by something external. I’m not surprised that I associate color with visual things, because I am so visually-oriented and color-dependent. (You should see my complicated spreadsheets and all the colors I use as labels, so that I can read it at a glance! I’m really good at Blendoku, too.)
Your relationship with reading and colour is interesting. I always was fascinated by the poems of Wallace Stevens because they so frequently referenced colour and thus animated the poetry for me. I don’t see colour where it isn’t but for me months have specific locations and numbers have personalities. I do choose books based entirely on their cover art but I don’t know if that is atypical.
I want to know my color, please! Elis.
Pale, not very tinted, little bits of silver and yellow and mint-green at the end.
If anyone’s wanting to read about this, I enjoyed the middle grade book “A Mango-Colored Space” when I was 19 or 20 – it’s not just about synesthaesia, but that is an element of the main character’s growth, as she tries to come to terms with grief about her cat (or something along those lines).
Of course, Oliver Sacks is also an interesting read, but I can’t remember which of his books is the synesthaesia one.
Just as an addendum, I think the book is “A Mango-Shaped Space”. I worked in a library in high school and always wanted to read that book when I saw it in the YA shelves.
This is wonderful. I’ve always been envious of people with synesthesia. The spatial ones are especially fascinating — as someone who can barely tell right from left without having to stop what I’m doing and consciously think about it, I think it must be amazing to perceive numbers and dates that way.
And I’d love to know what color my name is, too — I’m Amanda.
Red and orange! A is red, and M is orange-y bronze-y brown. But the A is a “stronger” letter so it takes over. N is green and gold but it’s totally overpowered by the A and M. 🙂
Yeah, Amanda is scarlet red to me because it starts with a really strong red A. I’ve heard that a lot of synesthetes see ‘A’ as red.
Your whole name is solid cherry red, which is unusual for me, because most first names gradually change colors from beginning to end.
I’d love to know the colour of my name! I go by Rae, but my full name is Rachel.
My dad has self-diagnosed himself with synesthesia, and it’s so interesting to hear him talk about the colours that go with letters (and his go with notes, too, I believe, as well as he ‘sees’ the calendar differently).
Second the recommendation for “A Mango-Coloured Space” – it’s a great middle-grade book.
I forgot to thank you, Gabrielle, for such an interesting piece!!
Is it the letters and spelling that look a certain way or the sounds? Like would my name look the same as someone named Sara? Or if you knew it was pronounced with a different accent?
Also, I loved A Natural History of the Senses! And the similar one she wrote, A Natural History of Love.
If anyone wants a fascinating fantasy story with synesthesia as a main element: “The Empire of Ice Cream” by Jeffrey Ford is an amazing piece. It won the Nebula for best novelette in 2003. You can read it in the anthology of the same name.
This is so timely, since one of the guys on True Detective has synesthesia. (I think his is from drugs though?) I feel like I understand it so much better now.
This is maybe a weird question but: do you find that the colours of people’s names often correspond with their personality? Or is it totally random?
Nah, totally unrelated for me. The names and words have their own personalities. Two Rachels are the same color but might be completely different people.
Totally unrelated for me. The letters and words have their own colors independent of the word’s meaning.
Synesthesia is a cool concept, but I always feel like the world’s biggest buzkill when I read about everyone’s magical experiences with it, because my synesthetic tendencies are coupled with a learning disability cocktail (ever heard of dyscalculia paired with ADHD? neither had anyone else, apparently, until I dropped out of high school, yay!) and they’re exhausting. I don’t have anything hard-coded and I don’t see associations in real time, but they’re real enough to me that they influence and sometimes completely change my memories. In a pre-smartphone childhood, when three-dimensional space is already a fluid and incomprehensible thing, remembering your friend’s house as purple, with the wrong texture on the facade and everything, is … difficult.
I’m really jealous of everyone who gets to have a cool time and talk about pretty colors, instead of just being embarrassed about everything.
Excuse me, I have to go call my mom and ask her to tell me I’m special.
That sounds super frustrating! And I am not your mom but I am pretty sure you are special.
You’re special for leaving nice comments on the internet. *covers your profile in pretty stickers*
I was actually wondering if synesthesia has downsides for folks, so thank you for sharing. I’m sorry that your experience isn’t fun.
I think my very roundabout point is that it doesn’t often pair well with other perception-altering conditions, like spatial disabilities and anxiety problems. It isn’t all bad, but I’m glad someone was interested and not just put off! I usually avoid discussions about synesthesia so as not to piss on the magic, but y’know. This tends to be a safer space than most.
I definitely can see it being disruptive and difficult to work with in some manifestations and combinations! I think part of the problem is that the most common varieties of synesthesia are so mild that they are mostly either neutral or actually a memory/reasoning aid, but the more intrusive types of sensory overlap are not necessary like that.
I had no idea that synesthesia was a thing until that lovely Doctor Who episode with Vincent Van Gogh when he talks about hearing colors. I did some googling after I saw it, and it seems that a lot of people think Van Gogh was a synesthete, though it’s up for debate. The myriad of things the human brain can do is truly impressive
Also, my name’s Mary Anne, if you wanted to tell me what color my name is.
My name is April, and I de-lurked just for this – what color is my name? Is there a difference between April-a-person and April-the-month?
Synesthesia is so fascinating, if not just for the fact that it illustrates the differentiation in individual cognition like few things can. It’s hard to picture how someone else thinks and perceives things, but the relational language of synesthesia (I keep wanting to spell it synaesthesia) provides some means even if they too are ultimately inadequate.
I believe that Kanye West has claimed to be synesthetic, and that it helps him make music. Most people I personally know who have it have “time loop” synaesthesia – they think of clock and calendar time as an irregularly shaped circuit, with different points in time on different sections, associated with different colors.
Arguments have been made that everyone is synesthetic to some minor degree but the only study that seems to support that thesis that I’ve seen had people shown a rounded oval shape and a jagged star shape and then asked to assign the names “keke” and “ooloo” to them. It turned out how you would expect it to. The connotation was that consonants and vowels naturally produce sensory responses. I’ve heard claims that ASMR also has to do with this but I’m skeptical.
Anyway, v cool read.
Names? Gabrielle starts out with green and fades into brown, with a twist of blue at the end (G,B and L). Her numbers are all freaking wrong– 3 is bright red, not pink– the letter J is neon pink– and 2 is sky blue. You’re welcome. 🙂
Hahaha. Oh my god. It’s so funny seeing another persons colors! I look at the title picture and I’m just like “NO. WRONG.” My name is orange for me, like mango/macaroni orange. And J is dark reasonable orange.
This is the best!
3 is not red. 4 is red. 2 is dark royal blue, not sky blue.
🙂
Months are colors to me, but I’m 90% sure that it’s because in kindergarten Ms Spiker had laminated construction paper ice cream cones for each month with all our birthdays on them, and each month was a different color. I spent a lot of time staring at that wall.
Serious question: how many of us chose our PIN numbers and/or bike lock combos because the colors were pretty? (My lock combo is the colors of my childhood swim team – that’s probably the only reason I ever remember it.)
SHER-LOCKED or bust
I totally do that! It makes it so much easier to remember!
This was so interesting, Gabrielle. I don’t have Synesthesia, but I do associate certain colors with different months, like November with brown, and October with orange.
Also, my name is Ashton-what color is it?
Mostly brownish? Harder and almost flatter in color/texture than I’d expect for an A-word, because the T and the N damp it so much. You have a complicated name.
I have it too! But for me, every single word in the world is a taste or a smell. It’s like I have to taste everything I read & everything I hear. Whenever I’ve had a girlfriend whose name was not delicious, I’ve had to give her a better-tasting nickname! (I don’t want to step into your spotlight, but yes, if anybody wants to know what their names tastes like I will totally say.) Anyway, lovely piece, and thank you from one whose first name, regrettably, tastes like peanut butter and jelly.
Oh my goodness, please tell me what Lynne tastes like. I’ve always wanted to know this.
I had a girlfriend for years named Lynne and it was always nice to taste her name, but it’s a very difficult one to explain. It has a very subtle alkaline tang; but with a smell of a shady creek in it too, the sort with moss-covered stones.
Oh that makes sense. It’s also a nice coincidence, since the root “lyn” means brook/waterfall/pool-beneath-a-waterfall.
Ooh! What does Julia taste like? What are the other complications of tasting people’s names? I feel like taste is something people have really strong reactions to, even stronger than color, so this could get tricky fast (especially in situations where you can’t nickname people, like in the workplace).
Julia has always tasted like purple grapes. Even writing it, my mouth is watering with the wild/sour flavor! Yes, it is tricky, but the main problem is not others’ names; it’s being constantly plagued with cravings. Because sometimes I can’t stand it, I just HAVE to go out & eat a Reuben sandwich because somebody keeps using the name Franklin, or whatever.
Oh wow, fascinating! Will you tell me what Sara tastes like please?
Maple syrup! None of my friends named Sara or Sarah know this, but it is nevertheless obvious to me. Of course, “obvious” tastes like bananas so now we’re halfway to breakfast. More than halfway since we’re already on the Toast!
now I need to know… I’m Martii
If you’re still taking requests, mine is Ariella. 🙂 My sister and mother have mild synthesia too, but don’t have a color for me or names, just for dates.
Reddish, but light and airy, with a real brightness to it. Bright like glinting in the sun, not like a really saturated color.
One thing that synesthesia does for me is that certain words are such perfect, wonderful combinations of colors and textures that I really, really love them. When it’s “velvet,” that’s all well and good, but the truth is that it’s got nothing on the lush and purple-yellow-loveliness of “vulva.” “Vulva” is, in fact, the best word I’ve ever seen: not just one but TWO Vs, with their rich, deep, royal purple (so much richer than Js) and lushness, L with the bright yellow layering on it, U (also really lush and rich, in a dark way), and A to brighten and round it out just a bit at the end. It’s just not a word you can say or use much in polite company.
I want to know! My name is Andrea
I want to know the color of my name! Jisoo Kim
Jisoo is a pretty blue-jean blue. Kim is always a solid pink-mauve -a few shades lighter than Clinique “A Different Grape” lipstick. Both of your names match very well together.
This is so, so cool. Will you say what color Sara is please? Thank you for such a neat story!
Sara starts out a warm mexican or southwestern yellow and slowly changes to primary red at the end.
Very curious if it’s the same for Sarah or different, as another Sarah asked elsewhere.
Different. Sarah is a much less vibrant warm set of colors than is Sara.
So fascinating! My name is Annette. What color am I?
yes yes! I’m Meghann.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen “personifying numbers” mentioned as an aspect of synesthesia. As a kid, I had a very involved understanding of how the numbers 0-10 got along with each other, which ones didn’t like to sit next to each other, which were the peacemakers, and so on. I still have bits of that pop up when I’m dealing with numbers (my phone number is so easygoing! except for the two 7s at the beginning, which are a little stand-offish).
And then I couldn’t fall asleep last night because I was revisiting the personalities of numbers. 1, 2, and 3 are a little clique of giggly but well-meaning kids, and 4 gets along with them but is a little more mature. 5 is a totally chill stoner dude, and 6 is that super-sweet girl who just annoys the hell out of you but you have no good reason for hating her. 7 always has somewhere far better to be than here and is extraordinarily pretentious. 8 and 9 are Mean Girls but mainly keep to themselves. 10 presides grandly over all the single-digits, and is much like Judi Dench as M. And last night I realized that all the numbers are gendered: 2, 3, 6, 9, and 10 are female; 1, 4, 5, and 7 are male; 8 is androgynous but presents slightly femme.
I have a friend who used to explain Opium as smelling purple. Every time. It was always purple and smoky- even the word on paper.
And like everyone else, I’m so curious as to what color my name is – I’m Martii
Dark purple lightening (ombre?) to brilliant white at the end.
I want to know! My name is Natalia
Great read, I hope you write another installment later on about continuing to find out more about how your brain works.
Does anyone have synesthesia when it comes to trig functions or other math symbols?
When I took trig in college, it was fairly easy for me because all of the trig functions have their own colors, so it was much easier for me to mentally “see” the problem and correctly solve it. For some ungodly reason, calc derivative functions and formulas are all the exact same color -black, which gave me endless difficulties.
I have perfect pitch, but no other musical ability or aptitude. An out-of-tune instrument or vocalist will make me nauseated.
When I got married, I *had* to hyphenate my last name, because my first name and my family name have always clashed a little bit. My first name and my husband’s last name clash terribly. I go by my middle name, because that way everything matches tolerably well.
When I purchased my beloved horse, I had to change his barn name (nickname) because it totally clashed with his registered name. Plus his former barn name was just stupid.
This is not something I normally talk about -I really am a functional member of society.
I’m not lucky enough to have any form of synesthesia, but you’re in very good company! Here is Richard Feynman’s description of his synesthesia, though he doesn’t call it that:
When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don’t know why. As I’m talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde’s book, with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.”
!!!
I love that you opened with talking about Nabokov. This was so good and interesting. Thanks for writing!
This was a great article but it also made me a little sad! I remember having synesthesia when I was younger, like when I was 3 and 4. I used to really strongly associate numbers as people and objects. It definitely faded away by the time I was 12 though, but I still wish I had it.
What is my colour please?
Thank you for writing this! I feel like you’ve been able to explain how it can feel to have something “unusual” about yourself that you never knew was odd.
For me, music is different colors. It almost “looks” like the old WinAp and iTunes screen-savers with the moving lines of colors that move in time to the music, except I can’t watch those because the colors are wrong. I don’t think I’d quite realized how odd it was until I had a discussion about Christmas carols with my husband, and I was trying to explain why “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” made me uneasy. Finally, I burst out with “It’s bright-green words with a mahogany melody! They don’t work together!” After a moment of silence, I realized that it only made sense in my head. 🙂
My name is Volanta…I’m very curious as to what my name is!