Grapheme-Color Synesthesia

Show of hands--who here can tell me what color the letter M is? The number 3? What theme or personality does the name Christopher have?

I started writing a post in April to tell you about something interesting that happens subconsciously in my mind. I typed out a full six pages on it, got feedback on it from my mom, and was working on refining and polishing it. Certain parts of it just weren’t feeling right to me, though, so I wasn’t ready to publish it yet.

I’m glad that I waited, because I recently discovered something else that pertains to this topic, and I’m very excited today to modify my original discussion and include someone else’s perspective along with my own.

First of all, I should probably start nailing down what on earth I’m even talking about.

Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which one sensory experience triggers a second, completely different sense in a person’s mind. There are many types of synesthesia. One person might associate changes in pitch with changes in color, which can contribute to musical intelligence. Someone else might be able to perform math subconsciously by creating abstract shapes to represent different values and then combining them. Others, such as myself, see a letter (or number) and associate a specific color with it. This last type, which I believe is the most common, is known as Grapheme-Color Synesthesia.

Disclaimer: I am honestly not very educated on synesthesia or even on this specific type. For the purpose of this post, I wanted to explore my own personal experience of it without necessarily having researched what scientists have discovered about it or what classifications exist. Furthermore, grapheme-color synesthesia may not encompass all that I discuss here, since my experience and the experience of the other person that I have consulted also include sound and texture. So if I am incorrect to group all of these experiences under one type of synesthesia, know in advance that I own up to my ignorance and am open to being properly educated. Just not right now. ;)

Anyway, allow me to explain my recent change of direction with this topic. I was sitting at the dinner table the other night reflecting on my incomplete post on this subject, and I mentioned to my mom, “You know, it’s funny. Not only do I have color associations with words, but also with numbers.”

My older brother, Trevor, who was sitting across from me, perked up. “What color is the number three, then?”

“Pink.”

He did a double take. “Really? I see it as yellow.”

Somehow, I never knew that I wasn’t the only member of my immediate family with such an oddball brain. I rushed for a sheet of paper and began the interrogation. What he and I found out in several hours of conversation was pretty astounding, and I will now attempt to consolidate it for your consumption.

First of all, I would like to share with you a side-by-side comparison of which colors my brother and I associate with different letters. I put in bold the four letters that we have either the same or vaguely similar, but as you can see, the difference overall is pretty drastic.

Olivia Trevor A - red A - red B - orangish brown B - blue C - pale pink C - yellow D - brown D - green E - green E - blue F - gravel (not really a color, but a texture) F - red G - pink (medium shade; flat) G - green H - white H - brown I - blue-black I - yellow J - purple-black J - purple K - magenta K - orange L - blue (darker as lowercase) L - yellow M - blue (darker than L) M - yellow N - green N - orange O - white O - blue P - orange P - pink/magenta Q - dark pink Q - yellow R - red R - green S - yellow S - green T - black/graphite gray T - red U - blush U - pink V - dark gray/ruddy brown/who knows V - orange W - dark ore W - yellow X - bronze X - black Y - ivory Y - yellow Z - iron Z - dark gray

What I initially found the most striking about this is how opposite many of our colors were. Some of the letters that I found the darkest, such as M, Trevor saw as a bright color, and occasionally vice-versa. Whereas many of my colors were darker or more demure, Trevor’s were overwhelmingly bright by comparison, having six yellows to my one and four oranges to my one-and-a-half-ish.

My poor brain was a little astounded that they were so different, but I had heard that everyone’s color system was unique, so I guess I wasn’t too surprised. I figured that the differences were random, but as Trevor started asking questions to explore what our systems of colors said about each of us and where they came from, I realized that there was a lot more rhyme and reason to this phenomenon than I had assumed.

First, we discovered that, although we were looking at the same alphabet, we were thinking about the letters differently. For example, I was particularly amazed that Trevor saw M as yellow, since it is very securely locked as dark blue in my mind and just seems so solid and strong and heavy. Trevor said that it’s because of the sound that M makes. Soft sounds for him create lighter colors, whereas hard sounds create darker colors. The funny thing is, I very often disconnect language from sound. I tend to translate things I hear into written text in my mind and attach everything associated with the word to its visual form. To remember a tricky pronunciation, I have to anchor the sound to the letters. Thus, my color system tends to rely a lot more on the appearance of a letter. M is the widest letter there is, with three feet firmly planted. Thus it was hard for me to think of it as any color that wasn’t dark.

Second, we discovered that Trevor and I think about color differently. As evidenced in the alphabet, Trevor’s is composed primarily with the traditional primary and secondary colors. My alphabet has all kinds of random shades, which are hard to define succinctly. I also have a pretty strong tactile association with the alphabet. Letters often have a texture and almost always have some sort of sense of size and weight and overall material quality. Thus, the color itself is not as singularly important to me.

Trevor, on the other hand, has a very strong sense of color, and not just in terms of language and numbers. Colors, to him, represent very strong and clear attributes. Here are the main examples that Trevor gave me:

Pink - fragility.

Green - health; vigor; association with the lower part of nature, or the earth; association with working outside.

Blue - bliss; calmness; association with the upper part of nature, or the sky; association with relaxing outside.

Purple - richness.

White - holiness, purity.

Orange - innovation, creativity, warmth.

Yellow - mellowness, calmness, brightness.

Red - life, strength, aggression (and dark red signifies anger).

One interesting thing that Trevor noted is that his alphabet doesn’t contain any letter that is the color white, because there is no sound that is pure enough. White is a highly esteemed, almost sacred color. For me, though, white does not have that significance. My one letter that is pure white (H is slightly off-white and tends to meld with other letters rather than retain its color) is O. It is that color simply because it is a wide open space. Its only character association for me is a sense of fragility/brittleness and honesty.

A couple of posts ago, under the title “On Giving Up,” I described a cycle that I fall into in which I am aggressive and confident and on top of things for a while, burn myself out and withdraw for even longer, and then slowly reemerge and recover, only to get too intense and wear myself out again. Trevor, who has not read that post, described that exact phenomenon to me to illustrate how he thinks of color. To him, that cycle is a movement from a red/green state of feeling energetic, healthy, strong, and pleasantly busy; to a dark green/gray/black state of feeling unhealthy, sick, tired, weak, depressed, and overwhelmingly busy; to a blue state of feeling healthy and calm, in which he reprioritizes and starts to be more productive again. I have gone through that exact phase more times than I can account and recognized his cycle immediately, but I have never once thought to view it in terms of color.

One thing that we found that we have in common is how we think about our own names. For me, it took a long time for me to attach myself to my name, for a number of reasons. First of all, of course, existing in my own body, within my own consciousness, there were a lot of things that defined me that were a lot more apparent than the set of syllables by which I was addressed. Secondly, though, the letter O is white, colorless, and open. It is one of the most substantless letters, and thus it didn’t give me much of an impression to go on. Furthermore, the other letters in Olivia aren’t that colorful, aside from the ‘a’ on the end, which is in a pretty inferior position and doesn’t carry much weight. I think that, because of this, I struggled to find a theme in it with which to connect the idea of myself.

Trevor’s name is more colorful to him, but only when it applies to other people. When he thinks of it in terms of himself, it kind of loses its color. He thinks that this is because we see all of our own complexities and often don’t understand them. It’s a lot easier to boil other people down into a singular concept, because our view from the outside allows us to categorize them based on their most apparent attributes rather than the sum total of who they are. But trying to tie our own identities to one word just doesn’t work all that well. It’s too small of a thing to contain the many aspects of a person.

Anyway, to sum up, it was just fascinating to me to explore this concept with another person who experiences the same thing, particularly because that allowed us to see just how uniquely the same form of synesthesia manifested in both of us. Trevor and I have always been similar in many ways in how we view and process the world, so it was neat to find yet another similarity that can be kind of an isolating one, given that it is pretty rare. I really cherish the opportunity to have conversations like this with him and learn from his incredible insight, so shout out to him for all of his thoughts that have made their way onto this page.

I hope all of you who have read this found it interesting. I might publish a follow-up post detailing the hierarchies among the letters and how they translate into the general impression of a word, but we’ll see. Thank you for reading, and feel free to comment your thoughts! Were you surprised by this post, or did you already know about synesthesia? Do you or someone you know experience it?

Have a blessed day!