I am very particular about orthography and phonetics.
/tʃ/ is by far my favorite consonant sound, which is the sound of "ch" in "chill". My other favorite consonant sounds are /k/, /l/, /s/, /h/, /r/, /n/ and the unusual pick of /g/. As for vowels, I like all of them except /u/ and /ʊ/, but I especially like the more fronted ones- variants on /e/ or /i/ (which are both fairly monophthongal to me.)
In orthography, this gets more complicated. "C" is by far my favorite letter, and I'll turn a blind eye to it being inserted into names, despite the fact that I don't like most "creative" spellings. "Ch" is the only proper way of indicating /tʃ/ to me, with the exception of "tch" at the end of a word or between two vowels. /k/ is even more complicated- I prefer "ca", "cl", "co", "ke" and "ki", as commonly indicated, but I also prefer the odd "chr" for /kr/, sometimes even if it wouldn't make sense. /h/ is "h", and conversely "h" is /h/- I do not like the addition of an H when unnecessary, except in the Greek-related "ch" for /k/.
I also have a mental list of features in a name which make it extremely unattractive. I dislike the sounds /u/ and /v/, doubled vowel letters of any type, and final "i" in Anglicized names. I also do not like /dʒ/, the "j" in "judge", in the initial position, despite my own name having it. /z/ is unappealing unless it is at the start of a name.
Perhaps the most unusual thing about my preferences for names is that I think the letter M is not attractive.
05 Aug 2013, 3:05 am
