I also do this, on a lesser level, with letters and days of the week.
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday Sunday: Girls. Tuesday, Friday: Boys.
A, C, G, H, I, K, M, N, O, Q, T, V, W, X, Y, Z: Girls.
B, D, E, F, J, L, P, R, S, U: Boys.
For the most part, though, I haven’t assigned personalities to the letters. But I can tell you that J is the super popular guy in school, I is the annoying freshman girl who follows him around like a lovestruck puppy, and H is her ugly, fat friend.
I know I’m not the only one, since there’s a Wikipedia entry on it (and Wikipedia would never lie), but I’m curious if any of my readers experience this.
I’ve heard of this, but it’s more the line of assigning colors with numbers. Like when I think of one two and three. Each one has it’s own color, 1(blue)2(red)3(yellow). Such as your example up top. It’s very bazaar, but I think most of it is due to habits you pick up in your early years in school, learning colors and numbers must have had some kind of impact on how you perceive things.
Also, I just re-read that, and I had no intention of saying your perception was wrong. The first sentence should have read, “I have had this happen, but it’s more along the lines of assigning colors with numbers. ” My mind thinks, though often faster than my fingers. :D
My friend Rhian has numerous forms of synesthesia: she has grapheme-color (letters and numbers, as well as certain words, have intrinsic colors), sound-color and a variety in which moods and emotions have intrinsic colors and shapes (for instance, love and affection are yellow and slanted off to the left, whereas anger, if I remember correctly, is rusty-colored and spiky at the bottom). I actually put together a list of corresponding colors and emotions for that last one. I think I still have it.
My friend Eleanor also has sound-color (she may have other forms, I’ve not asked). The only example I know is that she described Neutral Milk Hotel as “very orange music”.
Also, your description reminded me of my friend Hannah calling her friend Michelle her “DUFF”, or “Dumb Ugly Fat Friend”.
That’s kind of awful.
Yeah, I pretty much do this too, except everything also gets narration. Usually I will narrate what my cats are thinking as they go about their daily lives, but my calendar also has its own little back story.
oh man, i have only ever told my mom and my best friend that i do this too! Mostly because they both made fun of me, and told me i was crazy haha
I think 6, 7, and 8 remind me of that one Pedro the Lion song!
I’ve studied this phenomena a bit, actually- while it occasionally occurs due to psychological causes, like @Mike mentioned, it’s usually a neurological cause behind this- so, no causes in early childhood, that’s just how your brain works.
…I’ll be honest- I’m really interested in synesthesia because I kinda wish I had it. I seem to have an issue regarding a fear of being “normal” or “ordinary,” so I’ll latch onto things that I think would make me more interesting and special. Of course, this has the unfortunate side effect of making me second guess anything about myself that is special or interesting (or even bad-but-not-normal, like depression), because I worry I might be subconciously making it up to make myself seem less normal.
…and, I’m sure nobody actually wanted to listen to me rant about myself- I’m not the one with the comic, after all!
Oh mannnn I do this too! Each number has its own gender and shit… well at least the single digit ones. Hahaha. Good times good times.
I just like that J is the super-cool guy, since that’s my nickname amongst my friends.
For the record, I was the exact opposite of the super cool guy. Well, not exact opposite. I’m still a guy.
Wow. I definitely don’t do this, and have never even imagined that it might be done.
Which shows you a little bit about my self-absorbed unimaginitiveness. I always just assume that everyone in the world thinks exactly like me. When my brain works in ways that are out of the ordinary, it is a shocking revelation to me — like when, a couple of months ago, at the age of 28, I discovered that I am actually quite a disabled reader. Who knew!? (Apparently my mother, my husband, my BFF, my 3rd grade teacher, and pretty much everyone else I ever met — but certainly not I!) When other people think in ways that are unique and different, it dumbfounds me because I never thought to think like that before!
In any case, I think it’s fascinating! Especially interesting to me is that you and Mme. L (of the wikipedia article) both characterize some of your numbers similarly! I guess it’s natural to make the little numbers the youngest.
Now I want to go casually poll all of my friends to see if they do it!
I did this a lot with colors as a kid, crayons were my dolls at school. And throughout life i always had it in my mind that certain words or letters were more effeminate or masculine. Great comic!
I always thought that even numbers were the nice ones and the odds were mean.
The only number my brain’s given a gender is 8 (female, and fuchsia), but I do assign colors/prints and sometimes textures. And a larger number, like say 216, is not the same as ’2′, ’1′ and ’6′ added up or blended together – it is it’s own special weird color. Sometimes they get geometric shapes…but that’s also for larger numbers.
I’m not sure it’s the same thing, but, as a child, I used to assign personalities to colors. I remember Red being kind of a jerk (male), Yellow as being whiney (female), and Black as being sort of the pitiful outcast (male).
My preschool teachers once organized a fun craft-based lesson. They gave each child one feather of each color in the rainbow, plus a black one. We were to then trade feathers with our peers to create an Indian Headband in whatever color pattern we wished. I think the purpose was to teach us to work together, but when I ended up with a solid black headband, they called my parents.
“Why did you want only the black feathers?” my teachers asked with concern.
Apparently my response – I felt sorry for him because no one likes him – was what required the call to my parents.
I think it’s odd that they felt that was something your parents needed to be called for. If I heard a kid say that, I would assume that they were just trying to articulate that no one else likes that colour and they wanted to be different, or something along those lines.
when i was a kid i always thought this was a normal thing, up until i read A Mango Shaped Space.
i think i have a fairly severe case of this (severe feels like the wrong word because it has such a negative feeling connotation) but numbers have always had personalities and colours. most words have colours, too. sounds have incredibly vivid shapes and colours.
but i feel like this is a blessing as most sentences have a feeling to them. so, as a child if the sentence “felt bad” when writing a paper, i would re-word it until it had the same soft colour and flow that its surrounding paragraphs held.
geometry drove me crazy because the books we used to study always had the damn colours of shapes wrong. and i felt guilty during elementary math classes for making the numbers fight (ie: subtracting and dividing)
I always felt guilty doing subtraction or adding a positive number and a negative number together, because I felt sorry that I was decreasing the numbers’ absolute value. I also never liked adding two negatives together because I was further removing them from the possibility of becoming positive. (I had a belief that positive numbers were happy and negative numbers were sad.)
The green light is a happy face. The red light is an angry face. The amber light is an “oh no” face. (No, not an “O-face”.) And that’s as much as I care to reveal about my peculiar mind today.
For me it’s associating numbers (as well as months and letters) with colours. I don’t really get it so much anymore as when I was a little kid, but I can still remember a few of them…August is red, September is green, one is black, four is yellow, D is orange. Anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly wrong.
Lmao I love how 9 and 10 are hipster douchbags…god I hate hipsters. XD I will never think of 9 and 10 the same again now. I wish I could do thay automatically, it seems neat.
I definently do this… mainly with numbers. When I was little I would play with a deck of cards like they were girl and boy dolls… is that pathetic? :P
… it actually kind of hurts to see the genders you’ve associated with the numbers… because they are totally opposite from mine…
This blows my mind, I never even imagined this was something that is real! I joke sometimes that I personify all inanimate objects… but it’s really not as in-depth as this. Now I feel like my thoughts are so much more boring than they could be!
After reading previous comments, this feels a bit nerdy, but jumping in is always good. You might be interested to read “Born on a Blue Day” by Daniel Tammet. True, he’s an Autistic Savant, but he also assigns emotions/personalities to numbers. Very cool read.
Finally! I have never run across anyone else who sees numbers & letters as colors. This makes me feel so much more normal :) And now I know what to call it. Thanks!
I assign colors to numbers – its eally hard for me to get past and I honestly thought I was the only one weird enough to fixate on anything like this.
1 and 10 are neutrals, grays or something. 2 is green, 3 is blue, 4 red, 5 orange, 6 is black (and the coolest for some reason,) 7 purple, 8 pink, and 9 is a different orange. I’m a designer and illustrator, so color theory makes me utterly unwilling to use certain numbers together. 5,843, for example, would just look stupid. It will never matter in the slightest to anyone else, but I’ll know. And I’ll hate myself for using it.
All the time. My numbers have personalities, colors and often light issues. 9 is very dark, like it’s hiding in the shadows. 6 is bright like sunshine. They also have letter associated with them that make no sense. 4 is R, 3 is L… it goes on and on.
I’m an accountant for a restaurant and bar. Numbers have always had tastes associated with them, but it’s stronger now that I’m around food all the time.
It’s kind of awesome, I think. I feel that my bizarre associations help me be more creative, be it with cooking, building or being artistic.
I have a form of synesthesia where I taste words. Mostly when put to music.
I do recall one day in pre school when we were learning numbers and letters, they were playing a stupid recording of a song that paired 1 to A and 2 to B and so on, and when they got to 7 the melody was horrible and the taste was so rancid I started gagging uncontrollably until the teachers had to turn it off.
Assigning personalities to things seems like a much more amiable synesthesia.
I’m actually a little amazed at how many people have commented with similar differences. Out of all of my friends, I’m the only one I know who has synesthesia. My particular “flavor” of it, if you will, is audio-visual. When I hear something, I see it.
This has some major ups and downs. Listening to music can be AMAZING because I get little music videos in my head. But certain sounds/music are… I can’t stand them. Take a dog barking for instance. It’s usually fine with bigger dogs, but a tiny yappy dog shoots orange triangle-ish shapes across my vision every time it barks. So I hate Pomeranians (sorry to any pom-fans out there). I also can’t listen to the Beetles’ “Number Nine” song. You know the most awful parts of the video from The Ring? Play that stuff in your head only 5 times worse…. Yeah.
Synesthesia is actually how I discovered I learned my times tables. I viewed all the numbers as being certain colors, and when they were multiplied with one another, they would create different colors. For example: 6×7=42, but in my mind it was also hot pink times bright green equals orange and pink (the four in forty two is orange, and the two is pink). I can’t not see the numbers as specific colors. It might be why I’m bad at math reasoning but pretty good with memorizing numerical patterns, measurements, conversions, stuff like that. I’ve always been interested in talking to someone about it because I didn’t know that that wasn’t really a “normal” way to think of things until I saw something on PBS about it a long time ago. I also remember where certain bits of information are in books based on the shape of the paragraphs as opposed to remembering it was on a certain page. I often wonder if it’s related somehow.
I don’t assign personalities, but colors. 5 has always been blue, 3 is red, 2 is yellow, 4 is green, 1 is gray… Don’t know about the rest though.
I’m late to the party, but yes, with colors. 1 is yellow, 2 is flesh colored, 3 is red, 4 is blue, 5 is green, 6 is lime green, 7 is purple, 8 I’m not sure, 9 is brown. Recently I was reading something about a bird, a Red Legged Creeper, and kept thinking “that bird does not have 3 legs. Why is is named that?” for about 5 minutes until I finally figured it out.
I do this, too–genders and personalities. Not so much ages, though. I feel the need to let you know yours are all wrong.
How very interesting. I’ve not heard of this before, thanks for the Wikipedia link too. I must admit, your numbers’ genders and personalities seem ‘right’, for some reason.
I didn’t know the term “synthesia” before this, but I’ve always personified bits of my body. Like my toes and fingers — the ones on my right hand and foot are female, while the ones on the left are male. The nails look like faces, and the fingers/toes like their bodies, you see. A step beyond finger puppets I guess… This is also why I can never wear nail polish of any sort — I feel like I am blinding then :(
And I always visualise numbers and the days of the week in certain ordered progressions, in terms of seniority. I visualise all my numbers, esp. up to 20. They have definite emotions and nuances attached to them too. And Wednesdays feel … safe and warm and yellow and glowy while Thursdays and Sundays are cold, distant and awful.
Thank you for this one.
Huh – you made all the round/bumpy ones boys. I would’ve totally gone the other way.
That’s actually an interesting part of this–there’s no real rhyme or reason for the assignments that are made. Even though my first and last names start with B, and I’m male, and the word “boy” starts with B, I see “B” as female. And I see “G” as male, despite it being the first letter of “girl.”
Hey, AK. I felt the need to leave a longer comment, because before reading your awesome comic today I had no idea that the fact that I did this was actually a neurological condition. I just thought I had a really good imagination. How fun this is! Since reading up on this, I have realized that through my synesthesia I:
1) Assign genders and personalities to letters and numbers, but not colors (I want to reiterate that yours are wrong–”4″ is looking like a cross-dresser up there)
2) Visualize the days of the week and months of the year and years and decades within their own defined “spaces”
3) Visualize songs as a combination of shapes and colors and images, all of them changing as each verse, chorus, and bridge passes
4) When reading music, I personify certain notes and groups of notes as hostile to other notes, until I know how to play the whole song without error and then they’re all living in peace, but their travesties are never forgotten.
And I will now subscribe to your blog. Good work.
Ooh, neat! I realized that I, too, have “spaces” for days, weeks, and months – even hours of the day. I could never hope to explain how these spaces look or feel, but it’s always been this way.
This is awesome. Do you really do this? I am amazed and jealous.
Found you through Freshly Pressed and I am really enjoying your stuff!
I love your description of 9 and 10. I don’t personally have ordinal-linguistic personification, but now that I have read your analysis of the numbers… I agree…
<3 Milieu
Oh! Except 8. 8 is like a fat little dork that everyone loves. It’s my favourite number.
ohmygoodness I totally have this!! except its on a lesser scale. i just have vegue personalitys for numbers. but days of the week, and months have very specific ones. HA. Also I read a book on this called: “A Mango Shaped Space” by Wendy Mass. Its an excelent book, you should deff check it out.
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i do this too! four is definitely a little girl, she loves pink. and ballet…
ps love your comics.
I can’t believe someone else does this and it’s a condition.
Actually, I’ve done it for so long that I can’t believe everyone else DOESN’T do this. It’s also surprising how closely our assignments of genders align (except for 7 – he’s TOTALLY a boy! He’s so pointy and penis-shaped!).
While I didn’t do this with letters or numbers, colours had personalities since I was little. The basic ones would be red, blue, yellow, and green. If you are familiar with Archie comics, this could be summed up by saying Betty= Red, Archie = Blue, Veronica = Yellow, Reggie = Green.
If that made no sense, red was a sweet, genuine girl-next-door type. Blue was the average Joe, but also Red’s beloved. Yellow was a vindictive bitch who was constantly trying to steal Blue from Red. And lastly, Green was a priggish fellow who didn’t care one way or the other that no-one liked him.
This is so weird, thinking about doing this now, but I suppose as a kid your brain is still making connections. Blah blah science stuff I don’t know.
My six y/o son has PDD-NOS and told me today that 9 and 4 are girl numbers, and that 5 is a boy. He also has assigned gender to a few letters as well. Thanks for sharing your story!
I thought I was the only one ^^;
But I think two is definitely a GIRL!
OMG
I just have to comment because I thought I am the only person in the world who thinks this way!
Yey! I am not alone :D