A bit of a fun one today. On one of my other blogs I sometimes note how popular and iconic names from history often contain the double "M" sound.
To name just a few; Muhammad, Mary Magdalene, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, Maid Marian, Mahatma, Master Mason, Eminem, Mickey Mouse, and so on.
I've speculated that this is because we associate the "Mmm" sound with eating, as it's the sound made when opening and closing the mouth. Hence words like mother, milk, mouth, mamma, etc. So it naturally comes with positive associations from early childhood. Meaning that we perhaps intuitively like hearing this sound, and prefer names that contain it.
(More speculation about that kind of stuff can be found here - Oink - A Phonetic Alphabet)
Anyway, special advisers are featuring a lot in our political discussion at the moment. With the two most prominent ones being Dominic Cummings on the Tory side and Seumas Milne on the Labour side. As you can see both contain this double "M". (In fact, Cummings actually has a third "M" as his middle name is McKenzie.)
So, could it be that people are talking about these two so much partly because they just like saying the names?
With Cummings in particular it feels like people can't help but mention him. Especially in the media where journalists can't seem to stop making mention of his name. It's almost like his name is a meme - another double "M" word :)
No comments:
Post a Comment