"I will present on-going research on what makes a name sound good or bad, and how those sounds affect the success of a brand. The research is based on sound symbolism, which is the systematic correspondence between speech sounds (i.e., phonemes) and word meanings. I first identify, via linguistic analysis of a large text database, a set of phonemes that are systematically associated with positive or negative words (Study 1). I then report behavioral experiments (Studies 2A and 2B) showing that consumers prefer brand names with positive phonemes for promotion-oriented products (e.g., plant food) but prefer names with negative phonemes for prevention-oriented products (e.g., insect repellent). Next I demonstrate that consumers report a willingness to pay significantly more for the same product when its name has positive phonemes than when it has negative phonemes, but that this naming effect occurs only among regular users of the product (Study 3). Finally, I demonstrate that positive phonemes are over-represented and negative phonemes are under-represented among the world’s leading consumer brands (Study 4). Overall, the results indicate that (1) specific phonemes convey positive or negative emotion, (2) those emotional phonemes affect consumers’ product evaluations, and (3) successful brands capitalize on those emotions."